Spring-Festival: Hagen Quartett & Friends

This quartet is the stuff of legend. The four Hagen siblings from Salzburg, a musical family through and through, formed an ensemble in the 1970s and caused an immediate sensation. Such natural unity and almost telepathic understanding among the players was something audiences had rarely experienced. Early champions included Gidon Kremer, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and György Kurtág, and soon the ensemble — joined in 1987 by Rainer Schmidt as second violinist — was winning over audiences on major concert stages worldwide. They have collaborated with some of the biggest names in classical music: Maurizio Pollini, Krystian Zimerman, Heinrich Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Sabine Meyer, and Jörg Widmann. All four also became members of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which Claudio Abbado founded in 2003. Now, after nearly 50 years together, the Hagen Quartet bids farewell in the 2025-26 season — and tonight marks its final appearance in Switzerland. Joining them for Schubert’s deeply moving String Quintet is the remarkable cellist Julia Hagen, representing the next Hagen generation. And in Brahms’s fiercely dramatic Piano Quintet, the phenomenal pianist Kirill Gerstein takes center stage.