Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2

You’ll need nerves of steel for this concert! The program put together by the animated Colombian maestro Andrés Orozco-Estrada for his third appearance with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra starts with Antonín Dvořák’s sinister The Noonday Witch. The story is terrifying. An annoyed mother threatens her whining child with the tale of an evil woman who will come and take him away if he doesn’t stop crying. Sure enough, at noon the dreaded witch actually appears. Dvořák’s music for this horror story, however, is beguiling. The same applies to Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, at the end of which appears the Russian witch Baba Yaga. Mussorgsky’s musical museum tour is a prime example of the “open end” principle: originally written for piano solo, it was later orchestrated in glorious color by Maurice Ravel. The phenomenal violinist Isabelle Faust will provide a stirring oasis to all this witchcraft with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto. The second movement is almost painfully beautiful: like smiling through tears. With its spirited Bohemian rhythms, the finale seems to float high above the ground, as if the angels were dancing in heaven.