Since their foundation in 1956, the Festival Strings Lucerne have maintained a busy international touring schedule. They made their debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1957, in New York in 1959, in Tokyo in 1971, in Sydney in 1977 and in Hong Kong in 1978. In Europe, the orchestra performs regularly in leading concert halls such as the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam; in Lucerne, it presents its own concert series at the KKL Lucerne and appears annually as a guest of the Lucerne Festival.
The orchestra has always distinguished itself through its collaboration with outstanding musical partners, both established names such as Hélène Grimaud, Khatia Buniatishvili and Maria João Pires, and representatives of the younger generation such as Kian Soltani, Raphaela Gromes, Jan Lisiecki and Bomsori. Festival Strings Lucerne maintains a particularly close partnership with Rudolf Buchbinder and Midori.
The repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the present day. With new arrangements and world premieres of more than a hundred works by composers such as Jean Françaix, Frank Martin, Bohuslav Martinů, Sándor Veress, Iannis Xenakis and Krzysztof Penderecki, the orchestra makes a significant contribution to expanding the repertoire for string and chamber orchestras.
The Festival Strings Lucerne were founded by Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Rudolf Baumgartner as a string ensemble with harpsichord and as representatives of the Austro-Hungarian string tradition. Since 2012, the violinist Daniel Dodds has been the artistic director. With him as concertmaster, the orchestra increasingly performs symphonic repertoire in expanded line-ups.
The Festival Strings Lucerne can look back on a rich discography; they were pioneers of the ‘Archiv Produktion’ series, Deutsche Grammophon’s specialist series for early music, and between the 1950s and 1970s made numerous recordings with stars such as Clara Haskil, Pierre Fournier, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Zino Francescatti. Most recently, the Festival Strings Lucerne released an exemplary Beethoven album with Midori (2020 on Warner), a Mozart/Righini recording on Sony Classical in 2022, and a current bestseller, the double album FEMMES with Raphaela Gromes, also on Sony Classical. Another recording is planned with Midori, who will be touring the USA with the orchestra in autumn 2023.
