PROGRAMME
RICHARD WAGNER: Overture to Rienzi; Overture to The Flying Dutchman
ANTON BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107
- Conductor Riccardo Chailly
- Lucerne Festival Orchestra including Mahler Chamber Orchestra
ABOUT THIS CONCERT
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra returns to Lucerne again this August for its summer residency at the Lucerne Summer Festival. First invited to form the core of the newly founded Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003 by MCO founding mentor Claudio Abbado (1933-2014), the MCO feels at home in this ensemble of international talent, which is dedicated to musical friendship, freedom, and performance in a chamber-music-like style. Under the baton of Riccardo Chailly, who celebrates the 30th anniversary of his debut in Lucerne, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra – as part of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – performs four concerts in the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Lucerne (KKL), which was designed by acclaimed architect Jean Nouvel. This concert hall is famous for its exquisite acoustics and architecture, and remains the heart of festival.
In this final concert of the 2018 Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly conducts Wagner and Bruckner. The programme consists of two works of the young Richard Wagner followed by Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, which was being composed at the time of Wagner’s death. Bruckner responded to the news of his idol’s death by composing the coda of the symphony’s Adagio as a dirge in C minor. He also included a quartet of Wagner tubas in the orchestration as a tribute.