March
April 2023
In the Spring of 2022, Lucerne Festival Orchestra became guests not only in summer but, for the first time in Festival history, in springtime as well with a residency in which they presented the first part of a Mendelssohn Festival on Palm Sunday weekend.
Creating the tradition, LFO returns also this year to the Spring Festival with a programme where the music of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy plays a pivotal role.
There will be a change of conductors for the Lucerne Festival Orchestra’s concerts on 31 March and 2 April during the Spring Festival. Riccardo Chailly, the orchestra’s Music Director, has regrettably had to cancel his scheduled appearances as conductor due to an acute illness. Lucerne Festival is very pleased that Iván Fischer and Andrés Orozco-Estrada have agreed at short notice to take over and conduct the two concerts. Iván Fischer will lead the first concert, “Mendelssohn & Chopin,” on 31 March; Andrés Orozco-Estrada will appear on the podium for the second concert, “Mendelssohn & Schumann,” on 2 April. The programming remains unchanged, but on 31 March Iván Fischer will present both variants of the third movement of Mendelssohn's First Symphony: he will conduct both the Minuet from the original version of 1824 and the orchestral version of the Scherzo from the Op. 20 String Octet, which Mendelssohn prepared as a replacement for the Minuet for the London premiere of the First Symphony in 1829.
