The birth of Lucerne Festival dates from the gala concert with Arturo Toscanini conducting élite musicians in front of Richard Wagner’s former home in Tribschen in 1938. With this historic concert the idea of a Festival Orchestra was conceived. Besides Toscanini, other conductors in the Festival’s “early days” included Bruno Walter, Ernest Ansermet, and Vittorio de Sabata. The year 1943 witnessed the formation of the Swiss Festival Orchestra, with top musicians from all over Switzerland. This ensemble, which played under such commanding figures as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, and Otto Klemperer, contributed to the Festival’s rapidly growing prestige, holding concerts on an annual basis until 1993.
It was this tradition that inspired Claudio Abbado and executive director Michael Haefliger to establish a new and unique ensemble in 2003: The Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Soloists of international repute sit on its front desks, while the main body of the ensemble is drawn from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. A number of its members appear in various combinations in chamber recitals and chamber orchestra concerts during the opening weeks of the Festival.
The first guest performance took the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to Rome in 2005, followed by a residency in Tokyo in 2006. In August 2007 the Orchestra will its debut concert at the BBC Proms—all concerts under the baton of Claudio Abbado. Besides the traditional Lucerne Summer Festival, since 1988 the Easter Festival has taken place on an annual basis, as has the Piano Festival, held each November since 1998. Pierre Boulez is the artistic and conceptual director of the Lucerne Festival Academy for contemporary music. This forward-looking training workshop was designed in 2004 with the aim of instructing gifted young musicians to perform the music of our time.
A native of Stockholm, Anna Larsson completed her musical training there at the University College of Opera. Her operatic repertoire includes roles in Das Rheingold and Siegfried (with the Munich State Opera), the First Norn in Götterdämmerung (Berlin State Opera), Waltraute in Götterdämmerung (Finnish National Opera), Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice (Royal Opera Copenhagen), Ottone in L’incoronazione di Poppea (at Aix-en-Provence) and Andronico in Handel’s Tamerlano (Drottningholm Court Theater, Stockholm). Her richly varied concert repertoire includes Mahler’s Second and Third symphonies, the St. Matthew Passion, the Messiah, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Das Lied von der Erde, Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” Symphony, Brahms’s Alt-Rhapsodie, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, and the Verdi Requiem. She has also appeared with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the London Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, working with conductors such as Rattle, Haitink, Masur, Abbado, Harding, Ozawa, and Maazel. Her performances have also taken her to the festivals of Lucerne and Edinburgh.
Joe Miller is conductor of two of America’s most renowned choral ensembles—the 32-voice Westminster Choir and the 200-voice Westminster Symphonic Choir. As director of choral activities at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey, he oversees an extensive choral program that includes eight ensembles.
In addition to several collaborations with the Westminster Symphonic Choir and leading conductors and orchestras, Maestro Miller’s 2007–08 season includes conducting a series of concerts with the Westminster Choir at the Spoleto Festival USA and with the Westminster Chamber Choir in Italy, an intensive two-week choral program in Florence, Italy.
Guest conductor for numerous all-state and honors choirs, he will conduct the Florida All-State Honors Choir and the American Choral Directors Western Division High School Honors Choir this season. He will also serve as headliner for the 2008 Ohio Choral Directors Summer Conference.
Before his appointment at Westminster, Joe Miller was director of choral studies, professor of music and voice area chair at Western Michigan University School of Music. With the Western Michigan Chorale he received a number of awards, including the Silver Medal at the 2005 European Grand Prix for Choral Singing in Varna, Bulgaria, and the Grand Prize at the 2002 Robert Schumann International Choral Competition in Zwickau, Germany. He has also served as director of choral and vocal activities at California State University, artistic director/conductor of the Stockton Chorale, and music director of the Mother Lode Music Festival.
WESTMINSTER SYMPHONIC CHOIR
Composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, the Westminster Symphonic Choir has recorded and performed with virtually every major orchestra and internationally known conductor of the last 85 years. Recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles, the choir has sung over 300 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone.
In addition to these performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the ensemble’s 2007–08 season includes performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and with Neeme Järvi and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra at Patriots Theater in Trenton and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. In May the ensemble will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, “Symphony of a Thousand,” with Christoph Eschenbach and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.
Additionally, the 32-voice Westminster Choir that forms the core of the Symphonic Choir will perform Bach’s St. Matthew Passion led by Kurt Masur in February. Chorus-in-residence for the Spoleto Festival USA since 1977, the ensemble will present a concert tour of Texas in January and a series of performances in Michigan in March. Westminster Choir College is one of four colleges of Rider University, whose main campus is in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. A professional college of music with a unique choral emphasis, Westminster prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in teaching, sacred music and performance.
Fernando Malvar-Ruiz was appointed Litton-Lodal Music Director of The American Boychoir in 2004 after four years as its associate music director. Since then he has toured with the Choir throughout the United States and Canada. He prepared the Choir for performances at the 77th Annual Academy Awards and the Tanglewood Music Festival, and also for concerts with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the Choir at the nationally televised US Open Tennis Tournament Women’s Finals in 2004 and the 2006 international broadcast of the Presidential Prayer Service commemorating the fifth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001.
Mr. Malvar-Ruiz brings extensive experience in the field of choral music to The American Boychoir, having previously directed the Columbus (Ohio) Youth Choir, the Central Illinois Children’s Chorus, and choirs in Spain and Hungary. He has also taught choral music at Parkland College, where he conducted the school’s Chamber Singers. Widely sought as a guest conductor, lecturer, and clinician, he is recognized as one of the nation’s experts in the adolescent male changing voice. He served as an artistic director and guest conductor for the 2005 World Children’s Choir Festival in Hong Kong. For more than a decade he has been an instructor in the master’s program in music education at the Kodály Institute at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches conducting and musicianship.
THE AMERICAN BOYCHOIR
Currently celebrating its 70th Anniversary Season, The American Boychoir is the United States’ premier concert boys’ choir and one of the finest boychoirs in the world. It continues to dazzle audiences with its unique blend of musical sophistication, effervescent spirit, and ensemble virtuosity. Its members—boys in grades four through eight—come from across the country and around the world to pursue a rigorous musical and academic curriculum at The American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey, the only non-sectarian boarding boys’ choir school in the nation. In addition to maintaining an active national and international touring schedule, the ensemble performs and records regularly with such world-class artists as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, soprano Jessye Norman, pop singer Beyoncé, and vocalist and conductor Bobby McFerrin. Additional orchestral engagements in 2007–08 include multiple performances of Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with The Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall.
The Boychoir has been extensively recorded and broadcast on radio and television, with some 45 commercial recordings to its name, the most recent on its own Albemarle Records label. A new CD entitled Harmony: American Songs of Faith will be released in mid-October. For information about The American Boychoir School, please visit americanboychoir.org.