The Festival Strings Lucerne was formed in 1956 by Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Rudolf Baumgartner and is now one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras. The ensemble now performs in major concert halls in Europe, South Africa, Turkey, North America and South America. They perform at major festivals in Prague, Eisenstadt, Ludwigsburg and Rheingau. Each year they participate in the “Lucerne Festival” and have their own concert series (“Konzert Reihe Luzern”). Since 1998, they have been led by Achim Fiedler. Over the past fifty years, the Festival Strings Lucerne have premiered over a hundred works by famous composers such as Frank Martin, Bohuslav Martinu, Sándor Veress, Iannis Xenakis, Krzysztof Penderecki, Herbert Willi, Milko Kelemen, Peter Ruzicka and Beat Furrer; many were written expressly for the ensemble to play. The musicians have worked with world famous soloists such as Maxim Vengerov, Sabine Meyer, Reinhold Friedrich, Leonidas Kavakos, Mischa Maisky and Ruth Ziesak. This evening’s piano soloist is Austrian Gottlieb Wallisch, who is one of the up and coming generation of Austrian musicians, whose playing is both virtuosic and individually insightful. He was born in Vienna in 1978 and began learning the piano from his mother at the age of four. At six and a half, he began attending the Vienna Music University, from which he graduated with distinction. He was much influenced by Oleg Maisenberg and Dmitri Bashkirov, and participated in Steven Kovacevich’s masterclasses. At 16, he won the “Stravinsky Awards” international piano competition in the USA: he later reached the finals of the Brussels Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition and the 21st Clara Haskil competition in Vevey. He has performed with leading orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Chamber Orchestra, and with such distinguished conductors as Giuseppe Sinopoli, Dennis Russel Davies, Yehudi Menuhin and Neville Marriner. He has undertaken numerous major tours in the USA, Great Britain, the Middle East, Africa and other European countries. He has performed at various festivals and concerts, such as the Lucerne and Salzburg festivals. This latest season, he played with the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra at the Vienna Festival and the Budapest Spring Festival.

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