August 2021
Fitting to the theme of this year's Lucerne Festival ("Crazy"), the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and pianist Yuja Wang reunite to present a programme that challenges our sense of order.
Mixing self-directed ensemble works with those led from the piano, this concert passes through exuberant Baroque spectacles to modern works for restrained ensembles. Whether Jéan-Fery Rebel's aptly named "Chaos" from Lés élémens, or Haydn's La Passione, each one fits perfectly into the idea governing the festival, because they each "lose themselves in fantasy worlds and tend toward extremes."
As "artiste étoile" of this year's Lucerne Festival, Yuja Wang appears in many guises. But this self-directed approach, where she is both conductor and soloist, is taken from her last collaboration with the MCO, an extensive European tour in 2017. This was not our first collaboration. In 2011, under MCO Founding Mentor Claudio Abbado, Yuja Wang recorded her very first album with an orchestra, Rachmaninov, released in 2011 on Deutsche Grammophon.
