LUCERNE AND PRESS

THE GUARDIAN
October 15th 2004

Concert Hall, Lucerne Culture and Congress Center (KKL), Lucerne, Switzerland,

13th August 2004
Richard Strauss
Four Last Songs

Renée Fleming (sop)

Richard Wagner
Tristan und Isolde
(Act II),

Violeta Urmana (sop), John Treleaven (tenor), Mihoko Fujimara (mezzo), René Pape (bass),

Lucerne Festival Orchestra,
Claudio Abbado (dir.)

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Follow the leader

How Claudio Abbado transformed the Lucerne music festival

Stephen Everson

Friday October 15 2004
The Guardian

In April 2000 the conductor Claudio Abbado phoned Michael Haefliger, the new director of the Lucerne music festival, and asked to meet him in Salzburg. Abbado, who had decided not to renew his contract as artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic, had a proposal. "He said that he had conducted the festival's orchestra once in the 1960s and liked it so much that after finishing in Berlin he would like to start something like this again," Haefliger recalls. "He asked me whether we would be interested. I didn't hesitate."

At that point the Lucerne festival had been without an orchestra of its own for six years. The festival had been founded in 1938, when it was organised by what was in effect Lucerne's tourist board. Somewhat accidentally, it immediately acquired the image of a defender of freedom against fascism, since the first concert was conducted by Toscanini, whose European engagements had become increasingly limited by his refusal to perform in countries under fascist rule. That history must have struck a chord with Abbado, who was born in Milan in 1933 and whose parents were determined opponents of fascism.

What Abbado proposed was for the festival to have its own orchestra once again, but one of a very special nature. The base of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (LFO) would be the Mahler Chamber Orchestra that Abbado had founded in 1997. Its 40-odd members would be supplemented by players from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, as well as front-rank chamber musicians and soloists. Indeed, the orchestra's roll-call was astonishing, including the flautist Emmanuel Pahud, the clarinettist Sabine Meyer and the cellist Natalia Gutman. Kolja Blacher, once concert master of the Berlin Phil, was the LFO's concert master. Members of the Hagen Quartet played in the string sections. The idea was not to collect stars but rather, as Abbado put it, to assemble "musicians who enjoy making music together and listening to each other. And you can only do that with musicians who play chamber music."

Haefliger was not alone in his enthusiasm for the idea. "What really moved me was when I had the first conversations with the musicians. Someone like Sabine Meyer didn't say 'I'll see' or 'Let me talk to my family', only 'I'll come'. Period. Many of these players have really intense schedules and we cannot pay a fee that would come anywhere near what they would get for solo or even chamber-music appearances."

For Albrecht Mayer, principal oboe of the LFO and the Berlin Philharmonic, it is easy to understand why recruitment was so easy. "The idea is not to spend time in another orchestra; it's to spend time with Abbado. We all love Abbado and that's the only reason we are there. He is passionate about this orchestra. We play for him. No one ever looks at his watch to see how long he has been rehearsing. It's very unusual, very personal and connected only with Claudio."

The orchestra came together for the first time last year. "From the first rehearsal," recalls Haefliger, "there was the spirit of a youth orchestra, but combined with music-making that was at the highest artistic level imaginable."

Each year the orchestra is in residence for just under three weeks, which allows only 10 days of rehearsals for a repertoire that most of the players have never encountered before. Last year they performed Mahler's Symphony No 2, for instance, and this year his No 5. "I guess 85% of the orchestra at least had never played Mahler 5," says Mayer. "For people like me who have played this symphony often, it is odd to play in an orchestra based on these fantastic soloists, whose first idea of the piece is strange. We have to prepare a piece in a very short time. But together with Claudio and the fantastic ability of these soloists, the outcome is amazing. It's like an explosion sometimes."

The players' loyalty, moreover, is to Abbado the musician as well as to the man, and to his desire to bring principles of chamber music into even the largest orchestra. "Often when Abbado rehearses, he'll say 'OK, this group play and the others just listen to what they're doing,'" says Lukas Hagen. According to Blacher, "a big part of the work he did in Berlin was to get away from the old dictatorship of you play when the stick goes down. No: you play when you think it's right to play. You make your decision according to your own ears." Abbado's overall principle, according to Mayer, "is to give the responsibility to the musicians, not to take it away from them - which means that everyone has the bloody duty to care about his playing and his approach to the music."

As the recordings of the orchestra's first concerts now appear on CD and DVD, a wider audience can judge how extraordinary are the results of Abbado's project. His method has always been to combine meticulous preparation in rehearsal with intense spontaneity in performance. Watching the performances on DVD, it is striking just how closely every member of the orchestra watches his every gesture and grimace. "You have to watch him because you never know if what's coming is what you did in rehearsal," says Hagen. "The difference between the rehearsals and the concert is just incredible. There's so much more happening in the concert. It's just absolutely on the edge."

For Blacher, Abbado is "a real man of the night. There are probably things even he doesn't know he'll do before the concert, but there can only be this kind of spontaneity when people are ready to listen and to react to each other." "You play for your life," says Hagen. "You don't miss a single note, and there's not a note that's careless or without meaning. That's very special. Then it lives."

Details of the Lucerne festival are at lucerne festival.ch. Mahler's Symphony No 2 and Debussy's La Mer are out on Deutsche Grammophon. The DVDs Abbado in Lucerne and Mahler Symphony No 2 in C minor are out on TDK and EuroArts

Link to Musicweb.uk.net

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