Artiste: IRCAM

At the Lucerne Festival, composer Olga Neuwirth, Ensemble Contemporain and a sound team from IRCAM recently shone in a theatrical performance of an complex and ocean shore-inspired score.

Onwards Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra went, then, jumping forwards from a rousing Fifth to the Eighth, once again playing the later, even-numbered half of a ‘pair’ before the odd. Asked why the Seventh was much preferred publicly to the Eighth, Beethoven is apocryphally to have replied: “because the Eighth is so much better.

Programming works by Pierre Boulez alongside a high-profile Beethoven symphony cycle is an easy way to give exposure to the strikingly modern works of the Frenchman, but on seeing a substantial chunk of the audience disappear for an early drink before tonight's Boulez, I wondered if the Beethoven was perhaps too reliable a foil, leaving people little incentive to stay.