Ravel – Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly

Accentus Music has recorded a breathtaking all-Ravel program with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly to celebrate the orchestra’s 15^th anniversary. Founded in 2003 by Claudio Abbado, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra quickly grew into much more than “just” another festival orchestra.

The main idea of the “orchestra of friends” that Abbado had assembled was to bring the chamber music-like spirit of cooperation into the great symphonic worlds of the music of Mahler, Bruckner and the like. This idea is carried on by Riccardo Chailly, who was appointed as the festival’s and orchestra’s new music director in 2016 and completed Claudio Abbado’s unfinished Mahler cycle with a spectacular Eighth Symphony.

The incredible clarity and intensity of this orchestra, the wonderful timbres that make it so extraordinary – there is no program more suitable for experiencing and showcasing its uniqueness than the concert with works by Maurice Ravel that Accentus Music filmed on August 23^rd and 24^th in Lucerne. “That ballet music is a precursor of film music is seldom heard as directly as in the long camera shots through wide and whirling soundscapes,” writes the Luzerner Zeitung.

Recorded in 4K HDR.