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Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra

The Lucerne Festival Orchestra was founded in 2003 by Claudio Abbado and Michael Haefliger, establishing a link with the legendary “elite orchestra” for which Arturo Toscanini assembled acclaimed virtuosos of his time into a magnificent ensemble in 1938, the year of the Festival’s founding. In this spirit, the orchestra assembles the world’s most renowned musicians of which some soloists join forces regularly to perform as the Soloists from the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

The matinee concert of the soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on the 2023 festival’s third day proved once more that the Lucerne Festival Orchestra is rooted in chamber music and “music making amongst friends”, as Claudio Abbado so famously put it. The program was reminiscent of the first chamber music concert from the founding year: They performed Claude Debussy’s late-period Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp; Arnold Schoenberg’s late-Romantic string sextet “Verklärte Nacht” (Transfigured Night); and Maurice Ravel’s “Introduction et Allegro”, an exquisite chamber concerto for double-pedal harp with miniature orchestra. This year, Antonín Dvořák’s G major String Quintet, opulently scored with a double bass, adds a Czech musical prelude to the mix.