Riccardo Chailly & Michael Haefliger
At the Highest Level
Riccardo Chailly & Michael Haefliger
At the Highest Level
Each summer, top musicians from all over the world come together in Lucerne, Switzerland, to form the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Riccardo Chailly, the ensemble’s Music Director. He begins every first rehearsal the same way: “Apart from a greeting at the beginning, I let them play an hour and a half so they can find their unique sound. It’s something extraordinary.” It comes from listening to one another, Chailly notes – a quality that gives the orchestra its unmistakable musical identity. And critics have taken notice, praising the orchestra’s “incredibly luxurious sound” and its “peak of orchestral craftsmanship.”
The Kühne Foundation has supported the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2008 and, since 2020, has served as its main sponsor. Over the years, a close personal relationship has developed between the orchestra and the Kühne family. “You find people like Klaus-Michael Kühne very, very rarely,” says former Lucerne Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger, “with his special combination of visionary, entrepreneur, and music lover.” With this kind of backing and encouragement by Klaus-Michael Kühne, the ensemble has felt emboldened to move beyond the expected, expanding their programs to lesser-known pieces such as Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony or contemporary works by Wolfgang Rihm.
The outstanding musical moments draw people in, but there’s another level to sustaining ensembles like the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. As Michael Haefliger notes, to support orchestras is to invest in society – in access to culture, in education, and in what he describes as an “intense dialogue with humanity.” He believes classical music, at its highest aspiration, unites people across borders. And in this ensemble, it truly does: among the roughly one hundred musicians, twenty to thirty nationalities are represented in any given year. As Riccardo Chailly puts it, “The orchestra brings together musicians from many nations in a unity without prejudice, guided only by the wish to make music at the highest level. It is not political, but it naturally becomes a tremendously positive signal.”
“Klaus-Michael Kühne embodies a unique combination of visionary, entrepreneur, and music lover.”
Michael Haefliger
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Conductor Claudio Abbado and former Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger founded the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which gave its first public performance in August 2003. Riccardo Chailly has served as the orchestra’s Music Director since 2016. In recent years, the podium has also been graced by such distinguished guest conductors as Herbert Blomstedt, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Bernard Haitink, Jakub Hrůša, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Beyond the festival season, its members appear as soloists, hold positions in leading international orchestras, and teach at major conservatories; many also come from the ranks of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Filarmonica della Scala.
Doris Straub Piccirillo & KD Dr Michael Hitzler, MD
Prof. Dr Mirjam Schenk
Martina Russomanno & Tomislav Jukić
