Yuja Wang's fingers move faster than your excuses for skipping classical music.
The charismatic and inspiring Claudio Abbado and the mesmerising young pianist Yuja Wang, with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, hold the audience spellbound in this opening concert of the 2009 Lucerne Festival. Prokofiev's popular and vibrant Third Piano Concerto demonstrates the composer's sharp musical wit, and Yuja Wang is a brilliant exponent of the work. Following this, and chiming beautifully with the festival's theme of the relationship between art and nature, Mahler's First Symphony is given an illuminating and rapturously received performance.
Direction
Beyer captures Abbado's fragile intensity in his final years.
Acting
Wang's physical performance is theatrical, almost aggressive.
Sound
Mahler's funeral march will rearrange your organs.
Director
Michael Beyer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Abbado's penultimate appearance at Lucerne; he died four years later. The orchestra was his personal dream, assembled from friends.
The 'nature' theme wasn't decorative—Abbado believed music should dissolve ego into landscape. You can hear it in the Mahler's opening, literally birdsong.
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