The Lucerne Festival Academy is an orchestra-sized educational institution devoted exclusively to the interpretation and performance of contemporary classical music. It has taken place each summer since 2003 in the Swiss city of Lucerne as part of the Lucerne Festival in Summer. Founded by the French composer Pierre Boulez and festival director Michael Haefliger, over 1100 young musicians from over 60 countries have taken part in the Academy, described by The Guardian as "the annual laboratory in which brilliant young musicians are immersed in the performance practice of 20th- and 21st-century music".
History
Michael Haefliger was appointed Executive and Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival in 1999, and in the immediate years that followed he oversaw the re-branding of the then-called Internationalen Musikfestwochen Luzern , the creation of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra together with Claudio Abbado, and the founding of the Lucerne Festival Academy alongside Pierre Boulez. After a small ensemble of young European instrumentalists was invited to perform a trial project in 2003, a large orchestra of over 100 musicians from around the world has been invited to Lucerne every summer since. Almost all performances until 2012 were conducted by Boulez himself, with instrumental coaching and technical support was provided by his Ensemble InterContemporain. In recent years, guest conductors including David Robertson, Peter Eötvös and Sir Simon Rattle have been invited to lead masterclasses and conduct concerts, with Boulez being present for the last time in 2013. A day of concerts featuring Boulez’s music paired with world premières was performed in August 2015 to celebrate his 90th birthday, and following his death in January 2016 a memorial concert was performed by alumni of the Academy, featuring pieces which he had conducted at the Academy alongside two of his own works. Since 2016, the Artistic Director has been the German composer Wolfgang Rihm alongside Principal Conductor Matthias Pintscher, whilst instrumental tuition is now shared between Ensemble InterContemporain and guest coaches. With a focus on music from roughly the last 100 years, the academy’s repertoire ranges from masterworks by Mahler, Stravinsky or Bartók to commissioned works from living composers including Unsuk Chin, Isabel Mundry, Olga Neuwirth and younger composers. As well as several concerts for large symphony orchestra, each year’s programme also includes chamber music, featuring in recent years collaborations with composers Heinz Holliger, Helmut Lachenmann and Tod Machover.
