Lucerne Festival Academy 5

Make American History Great Again? Endangered Dreams is the title that the African American composer Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, who lives in Biel, has given his new ensemble piece. He says he is responding to “the present situation in America, where there is a battle of American identity and history taking place right now. There are factions in America who want to re-write American history and to delete the unpleasant parts of that history — and to sanitize the American Dream of its blemishes. Which means essentially to turn this dream into a one-sided lie.” Just how multifaceted America sounds becomes clear in the rest of the program: Steve Reich, one of the pioneers of Minimalism, fuses two marimbas and two vibraphones into an ecstatically pulsing rhythm machine in his Mallet Quartet. Elliott Carter’s music, by contrast, is deeply rooted in both American and European modernism. His energetic Asko Concerto draws on the Baroque concerto grosso tradition, setting full-ensemble passages against duos, trios, and solos. Augusta Read Thomas wrote Abracadabra (Suncatchers) expressly “for 11 virtuosi”: sparkling, colorful music that keeps pulling new ideas out of the hat. And Dr. Doreen Ketchens, a renowned clarinetist from New Orleans, channels the American Dream by transforming the music of the city’s streets into a form where the ear learns to “free itself.”

Tickets: CHF 50

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