Lucerne Festival Forward: Creating groundbreaking concert experiences

New music has always played an important role under Artistic Director Michael Haefliger at the Lucerne Festivalalso in the main summer program. For many years, Pierre Boulez was the dazzling personality of the Academy, in which young musicians explored the interpretation of innovative pieces. Today, Wolfgang Rihm is the artistic director of the Academy.

For this unique community of performers and those interested in the Academy, the Forward Festival has now been launched from November 19 to 21, which is emphatically "young" and "future-oriented". While the piano festival previously featured piano stars, the head of the contemporary section, Felix Heri, and his dramaturge Mark Sattler are now looking for listeners who are not interested in big names, but in new spatial concepts, interaction and electronics.

This bold move towards the future also includes the founding of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), which focuses on 20th and 21st century scores and also performs at this new festival in addition to concerts in the summer. As international as the orchestra is, the Lucerne Festival still seeks contact with local organizers such as the Forum Neue Musik Luzern and the Kultissimo children's culture festival of the Central Switzerland regional office of the Pro Juventute Foundation.

A children's concert took place on Sunday at 12 noon in the rehearsal hall of the KKL, and not everyone realized that they had to gather at the artists' entrance beforehand. But in the end, all those who were curious were in the right place. The instruments on display looked promising. A grand piano, a marimba and a double bass, a stool to sit on and play the drums, and lots of colored plastic tubes on the floor in front, tuned to tones according to color.

The 15 children sat in a semicircle on the floor, their parents behind them on chairs. Everyone was immediately captivated by the three dynamic musicians Helga Karen, Maggie Hasspacher and Xizi Wang. Their playful variations on the song All the birds are already here was great. Then the pipes and rattles were distributed among the audience, everyone imitated the prescribed bolero rhythm, it got louder, but also quieter again. A clever display of musical creativity that the adults also enjoyed.

New music has conquered new spaces in many places; it is often played in art halls or outside in public squares. In the KKL, the Kunsthaus is the perfect venue. On Saturday at 4 pm, members of the LFCO improvised to the airy installations of Argentinian-Swiss artist Vivian Suter.

Or the performance artist Winnie Huang, who invited me to 15-minute one-to-one encounters throughout the festival. I enter her box, which is draped with black cloth, Winnie Huang sits on a chair and I, the visitor, sit opposite her. It is eerily quiet and dark in here, the spotlight focuses on her hands, her fingers begin to move slowly. I follow her delicate movements, her wandering gaze, every detail is perceived very clearly - an experience in itself.

Does an open-air event at 10 pm on a cold November night really make sense? The opening concert on Friday evening, which took place on the terrace of the KKL, was hardly attended by any more people. Too bad for the original piece Workers Union by Louis Andriessen (1939-2021), which he wrote "for any ensemble of loud-sounding instruments".

The four more "conventional" concerts with the LFCO, conducted by Mariano Chiaccharini and Elena Schwarz, then took place in the main hall. A surprising number of female composers were represented in these programs, including such renowned musicians as Liza Lim, Pauline Oliveros, Rebecca Sounders and Olga Neuwirth. Neuwirth's spectacular film music project Construction in Space for four soloists, four ensemble groups and live electronics caused a sensation on Sunday evening.

The spatiality of the KKL concert hall and the interaction with the audience played an important role in all the compositions presented, especially in the works commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, which were premiered in the 3rd concert. Patricia Martinez (b. 1973), for example, had her ensemble piece Field the audience hummed a low note. And Dahae Boo (born 1988) surprised the audience with her dramaturgically dense piece D'où à oùin which the solo cellist on stage also interacted gesturally with the six instrumentalists distributed around the room.

Not only was this concert varied and originally conceived, the Forward Festival attracted an astonishing 1,300 visitors to its very first edition. With its different formats and playful "events", it liberates new music from its exclusive circle.