“Roche Commissions” 2026

Two years after Beat Furrer first received the commission, the world premiere of his work Lichtung, the 12th in the ongoing series of “Roche Commissions,” will be performed this evening at Lucerne Festival. Beat Furrer will conduct the new work, which he has previously rehearsed with the musicians of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) – a highlight of this year’s Lucerne Festival Academy during its 20th-anniversary edition.

Beat Furrer refers to Lichtung as “a sonic energy,” to “gravitational forces, elementary states, forms of energetically charged particles,” drawing a comparison with the painting Graue Schichten (“Grey Layers”) by Max Weiler, an Austrian painter of the 20th century. “Though it seems abstract, it is not. It is full of allusions, full of history. You can associate all sorts of things with it. The shapes are so complex, and the depth of the colour combinations opens up an incredible imaginative space.”

The next commission in the “Roche Commissions” series has already been confirmed. The Australian composer Liza Lim, whose works have been presented at Lucerne Festival on several previous occasions, has been awarded the commission for the 13th edition of the “Roche Commissions,” which she is writing for the 2026 Summer Festival. She will likewise compose a work for large orchestra, the world premiere of which will be presented by the LFCO at the KKL Luzern Concert Hall.

Born in Perth, Australia, in 1966, Liza Lim is a composer, educator, and researcher. The relationships between different cultures have been a lifelong theme for Lim, who grew up in Australia as the daughter of Chinese parents and who has taught in Europe. Her music addresses ecological, spiritual, and transcultural themes of our time and encompasses solo, chamber, and orchestral works, as well as five operas. She has received commissions from some of the world’s leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, Arditti Quartet, and Klangforum Wien. Lim most recently appeared at Lucerne Festival in November 2023, when her work Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time for 15 musicians and a gestural performer and video received its world premiere. In this work, a river represents the flow of time, both figuratively and sonically, as it moves between transience and continuity. Liza Lim is Professor of Composition and holds the first Sculthorpe Chair in Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she also directs the Composing Women program.