Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)

Wolfgang Rihm Tutor
Rita Castro Blanco*, Jack Sheen^, Maayan Franco+, Swann van Rechem Conductors

Pierre Boulez . Initiale ^
Tyson Davis - Tableau No. IV für Horn solo
Tyson Davis - Canto II +
Arnau Brichs - Crim Perfecte
Theophilus Finkel - Tournesol *
Guillem Palomar Anglí - Hymne +

Wolfgang Rihm presents the participants and their works in concert

Wolfgang Rihm has given the young participants in this year’s Composer Seminar an unusual instrumentation to work with: seven brass players with harp, piano, and two percussionists. What a variety of timbres is possible! The particular makeup of this formulation, however, is not random but is based on Pierre Boulez’s Initiale, a virtuoso brass fanfare that the founder of the Lucerne Festival Academy wrote for the Houston Symphony Orchestra in 1987. The piece will open a concert in which you can encounter a wide range of examples of the emerging generation of composers, for variety is what matters to Rihm. His goal is “to promote distinctiveness rather than a seeming adherence to conventions, whether avant-garde or reactionary.” And because few people are able to talk about music with such illumination – about what its creators intended and what listeners perceive – Rihm himself will offer guidance through this survey of works and introduce each composer and their works during the concert.