Opening – Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1

The Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly launch the 2022 Summer Festival with a double premiere. First is the world premiere of a brand-new work by Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy, who celebrated his 70th birthday in March. The star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will then join them for her first joint performance with the orchestra. In keeping with the theme of “Diversity,” she will play a violin concerto by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, one of the few Black composers from the 18th century.

Today he is sometimes described as “Mozart noir,” but in Paris at the time he was much more successful than his Salzburg colleague: the gifted violinist advanced to become Queen Marie-Antoinette’s favorite musician and also became a sensation through his fencing skills, later fighting at the head of a legion of 1,000 soldiers for the Republic. Not even the polyglot Sergei Rachmaninoff was as versatile. Still, the latter’s highly Romantic Second Symphony beguiles with yearning melodies that you won’t be able to get out of your head.