Lucerne presents a musical treat for Easter

The Culture and Congress Centre will be one of the main festival venues Keystone Archive

The acclaimed Lucerne Festival will present its Easter series of concerts from March 31 to April 8. This year, the festival will try to strike the right chord between secular and religious music, ancient and modern.

The festival organisers say they want to “achieve a balance between orchestras and ensembles playing modern instruments and those preferring to give more traditional performances”.

They say part of the balance will come in the mix of concert venues, from intimate church settings to grand concert halls such as that located in the new Culture and Congress Centre.

One performance scheduled for the centre will be the interpretation of Haydn’s “Theresa Mass” by Concentus Musicus Vienna and the Arnold Schönberg Choir with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. They’ll also perform Beethoven’s rarely played “Cantatas on the death of Emperor Joseph II”.

The festival will also boast the Swiss premiere of “Deus Passus” by Wolfgang Rihm, focusing on St Luke’s view of the crucifixion.

Bach’s “St Mathew Passion” will be performed for the third time at the Easter Festival since 1992.

A symposium titled, “Music – Religion – Church. An area of conflict” will be held to coincide with the festival.

The Lucerne Festival (formerly the International Festival of Music) also counts a week of concerts in August and in November.

swissinfo