Lucerne Festival Orchestra

The summer of 2003 saw the birth of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA, which was founded by the Italian conductor Claudio Abbado and by the Festival’s Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger. In creating the orchestra, they established a link with the legendary elite orchestra for which Arturo Toscanini assembled acclaimed virtuosos of his time to form a magnifcent ensemble, introducing it in a “Concert de Gala” in 1938, the year of the Festival’s founding. Abbado served as Music Director of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA up until his death in January 2014. Riccardo Chailly, who was appointed as his successor, inaugurated his tenure as the new Music Director in the summer of 2016 with two performances of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, thus concluding the Mahler cycle that Abbado had been unable to finish.

The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA comprises internationally acclaimed principals, chamber musicians, and music teachers, as well as members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Filarmonica della Scala. For the 2017 Summer Festival, Chailly will prepare three different programs with them, presenting composers who were either not performed or seldom heard in previous LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA concerts: Richard Strauss, Felix Mendelssohn, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Igor Stravinsky. Many of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA’s performances over the last decade have been broadcast on television and then released on DVD; these have garnered such awards as the Diapason d’Or, the BBC Music Magazine Award, and the International Classical Music Award. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA has previously toured to many of the musical metropolises in Europe, as well as to New York, Tokyo, and Beijing in 2009. In the fall of 2017 they went on an Asian tour, with stops in Tokyo, Kawasaki, Kyoto, Seoul, and Beijing.

Music Director: Riccardo Chailly

Riccardo Chailly, who was born in 1953 in Milan, studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, beginning his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he moved to the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; starting in 2015, he became Music Director of La Scala in Milan, and since the summer of 2016 he has held the position of Music Director of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA.

Chailly regularly conducts such leading European orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris. In the United States, he has worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

As an opera conductor – in addition to his performances at La Scala – he has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, Zurich Opera, the Bavarian and Vienna Staatsoper companies, Chicago Lyric Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Riccardo Chailly has received many prizes for his more than 150 CDs, including two Echo Klassik Awards (in 2012 and 2015); Gramophone magazine chose his account of the Brahms symphonies as Recording of the Year in 2014. Riccardo Chailly is a Grand’Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, Cavaliere di Gran Croce, and a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In 1996 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in France he has been an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres since 2011.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 7 September 1988 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam in a program of works by Wagenaar, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.

Pianist: Haochen Zhang

"Such a combination of enchanting, sensitive lyricism and hypnotizing forcefulness is a phenomenon encountered very rarely."

—《Ury Eppstein, The Jerusalem Post》

Since his gold medal win at the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, 27-year-old Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang has captivated audiences in the United States, Europe, and Asia with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. In 2017, Haochen received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, which recognizes the potential for a major career in music.

Haochen has already appeared with many of the world’s leading festivals and concert series and following his performance of Liszt’s Concerto No. 1 at the BBC Proms with Yu Long and the China Philharmonic received rave reviews: ‘He made the Allegretto dance with Mendelssohnian lightness and Lisztian diablerie, and played the melody of the Quasi Adagio with melting softness.’  Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph.

A popular guest soloist for many orchestras in his native China, Haochen made his debut in Munich with the Munich Philharmonic and the late maestro Lorin Maazel in April 2013, preceding their sold-out tour. Haochen has also toured in China with the Sydney Symphony and David Robertson, in Tokyo; Beijing and Shanghai with the NDR Hamburg and Thomas Hengelbrock; and following a performance in December 2014 with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in Beijing, Mo. Gergiev immediately invited Haochen to his Easter Festival in Moscow, Russia.

Highlights of his 17/18 season include his debut solo recital at Carnegie Hall, performances with Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM, China Philharmonic, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, California Symphony, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, and Taiwan Philharmonic, along with performances with the China NCPA Orchestra at their Carnegie Hall debut and New Year concert in Beijing, the Shenzhen Concert Hall 10th Anniversary Gala with Lang Lang, and a Chinese New Year concert with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich and Maestro Yu Long. This season, he makes his debut with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Haochen will also give recitals in Mexico City, Madrid, and Boston, among others.

In February 2017, Haochen’s latest recital CD was released by BIS, including works by Schumann, Brahms, Janáček, and Liszt. In past seasons, Haochen has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, London Symphony, Japan Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, and Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestras.  In recital, he has performed at Spivey Hall, La Jolla Music Society, Celebrity Series of Boston, CU Artist Series, Cliburn Concerts, Krannert Center, Wolf Trap Discovery Series, Lied Center of Kansas and UVM Lane Series, among others. International tours have taken him to cities including Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Dresden, Rome, Tivoli, Verbier, Montpellier, Helsingborg, Bogota, and Belgrade.

Haochen is also an avid chamber musician, collaborating with colleagues such as the Shanghai String Quartet and Benjamin Beilman and is frequently invited by chamber music festivals in the United States including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and La Jolla Summerfest.

Haochen’s performances at the Cliburn Competition were released to critical acclaim by Harmonia Mundi in 2009. He is also featured in Peter Rosen’s award-winning documentary chronicling the 2009 Cliburn Competition, A Surprise in Texas.

Haochen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied under Gary Graffman. He previously trained at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Shenzhen Arts School, where he was admitted in 2001 at the age of 11 to study with Professor Dan Zhaoyi.