Lucerne Festival annual review 2016
With the three festivals at Easter, in the summer and at the Piano, Lucerne Festival achieved an overall occupancy rate of 90 percent, with 85,400 admissions to the paid events. Free and side events generated an additional 20,400 admissions.
The Easter Festival commemorated the late Academy founder Pierre Boulez with a concert by alumni of the Lucerne Festival Academy, while Jordi Savall presented sacred and secular works in a wide variety of instrumentations and atmospheres as artist-in-residence at the KKL Lucerne and in Lucerne's churches.
In the summer, the "PrimaDonna" festival focused on the role of women in music, including the presentation of 15 female conductors. Around 5,000 interested people attended the experience day on August 21, which featured Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Anu Tali, Maria Schneider, Elena Schwarz and Konstantia Gourzi.
Riccardo Chailly started as the new chief conductor of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony, Wolfgang Rihm made his debut as director of the Lucerne Festival Academy with the first Composer Seminar, Matthias Pintscher was present for the first time as Principal Conductor of the Academy. Olga Neuwirth was composer-in-residence, and the festival's "artistes étoiles" were all female artists - from debutantes such as Elim Chan and Asya Fateyeva to major stars such as Anne-Sophie Mutter and Cecilia Bartoli.
Lucerne Festival Young combined dance and music and realized the young performance production "Divamania", which will go on tour in Switzerland in spring 2017. New concert formats such as the free 40min series and Interval, a foyer concept as a meeting point for artists and audience, set the tone for the future.
The piano festival welcomed newcomers such as Kit Armstrong and Louis Schwizgebel as well as renowned stars such as Grigory Sokolov and Igor Levit, but also organist Cameron Carpenter for the first time.
