Performer: Lucerne Festival Orchestra

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s recent debut with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was a dazzling Beethoven-Shostakovich programme that epitomised the “power of music”.

In an all-Rachmaninov evening, Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra open the 2019 festival with a brilliant exploration of the relation of music to power.

Fail to inject the composer's cathedral-sized symphonic structures with a sense of rapt wonder and they can sound dull.

Works by Stravinsky and Mozart launched this year’s Lucerne Festival, whose theme is “Childhood”.

Conductor Riccardo Chailly launched this year's Lucerne Festival with a riveting programme of three late 19th century works by the great orchestral explorer, Richard Strauss.

Many think that Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony points to a kind of cosmic grandeur, and little else can match the power and excellence of its finest performance. The Lucerne concert proved them right.