Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)

The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) was founded in 2021 to provide Lucerne Festival with an outstanding orchestra for new music. As a counterpart to the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, it focuses on compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries, ranging from modern classics to world premieres. It has premiered such works as Beat Furrer’s Lichtung, Rebecca Saunders’s to an utterance, and Thomas Ades’s Air (featuring soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter). The members of the LFCO have all benefited from their training at the Lucerne Festival Academy, which was initiated by Pierre Boulez and subsequently led by Wolfgang Rihm. Through its close ties to the Academy, the LFCO plays a pioneering role in the performance and interpretation of contemporary music and the development of forward-looking concert formats. It also incorporates new technologies into its projects, while interdisciplinary works give rise to innovative listening and concert experiences. The LFCO performs at Lucerne’s Summer Festival; in November, the musicians present a festival of their own dedicated to contemporary music: Lucerne Festival Forward. Recent invitations have taken the LFCO to the “Visions” Festival at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Musikfest Berlin, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival. The LFCO has collaborated with Sir George Benjamin, Sylvain Cambreling, Heinz Holliger, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Susanna Mälkki, Enno Poppe, and Tyshawn Sorey, among others, and has participated in productions at the Luzerner Theater.

The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) performed here for the first time in the summer of 2021. 

June 2025