Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony no. 35 in D major K. 385 "Haffner"
Anton Bruckner Symphony no. 5 in B-flat major WAB 105
Conductor Claudio Abbado / LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA including MAHLER CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

This year, the annual tour of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as its core, takes the ensembles to Baden-Baden, Paris and London. The rehearsal period and the first concert took place in Baden-Baden, the second performance in Paris. London is the third and final stop on the tour. In the course of four days, two symphonic programmes will be performed as well as a chamber concert by members of the LFO and a club concert with the Mahler Chamber Soloists in the series LIMELIGHT - Classical Music in a Rock'n'Roll Setting.

This evening’s concert is the final performance of a programme that was received with enthusiastic praise this summer in Lucerne: "Where else does one get to hear such extremely soft, many-layered dynamics in the piano range?" remarked the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the interpretation of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony. "Where else such a strong but always structured fortissimo (in which the strings are never covered by the brass, and the winds, too, consistently add their colouring)?" And of Mozart's "Haffner" Symphony: "The Minuet, sharp in its focussed articulation, and then the presto Finale: fireworks, to which one can respond with nothing other than ‘Ah’ and 'Oh'."

For Claudio Abbado, a lifelong dream was fulfilled with the founding of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA in 2003: Members of the world's great symphony orchestras, soloists and chamber musicians - all of them friends of the Italian conductor - come together each summer to form a combined ensemble and create unforgettable musical moments. Abbado named the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as the core of this unique orchestra. The performances of the LFO have garnered much attention in the classical music world; many of them have been broadcast on television and are now available on DVD - most recently, in January 2011, a recording of Mahler's Ninth Symphony from last summer was released. Previous tours have brought the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA to Rome, Vienna and Madrid as well as to New York, Tokyo and Beijing.

Radio:
The concert will be broadcast live by Radio 3 at 7:30 pm and will be available for the following week on BBC iPlayer.