The Contemporary-Conducting Program is aimed at young, aspiring professional conductors and should serve as a platform for a future conducting career.
From the Conducting Fellowship to the Contemporary Conducting Program
Practice and experience are components of conducting. But how should young conductors practice? Unlike a violinist or trumpet player, they do not always have their “instrument”, the orchestra, at hand. This is precisely why the Lucerne Festival Academy offers a broad-based Contemporary-Conducting Program every summer. Baldur Brönnimann is the Course Director since 2023.
In the three-week-long development program with a particular focus on contemporary music, the young conductors work with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) and the Ensemble of the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA). They also get to conduct the performances within the Composer Seminar (led by Unsuk Chin, Dieter Ammann, and other composers) and interact with other visiting conductors at Lucerne Festival.
Lucerne Festival’s commitment to the development of young conductors is shared by the institutional partners Klangforum Wien, WDR Symphony Orchestra, and Casa da Música (Porto) who might provide further professional opportunities for the participants of the Contemporary-Conducting Program.
When Pierre Boulez started the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2004, he included a Fellowship, where four young conductors had the oportunity to work with him self in a masterclass and to observe/conduct the performing groups of the academy.
In 2023 Brönnimann redesigned the program together with the director of the Lucerne Festival Academy, Felix Heri. The key new elements of the course were:
extension of the course from two to three weeks
more podium time for the participants
increased interaction with the rest of the festival: rehearsal visits, contact with guest conductors, managers and thought leaders from the classical music world
Live auditions in Lucerne and New York
Supervision/coaching, video analysis, theoretical classes related to programming, career development, rehearsal technique etc..
collaboration with institutional partners to facilitate the step into the music profession for the participants. In 2024, these partners were Casa da Musica in Porto, the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne and Klangforum Vienna.
Meetings with managers, agents and other personalities from the classical music business in order to build a network and to support the professional development of the participants.
Input from leaders and relevant personalities from other fields than classical music.
The Lucerne Festival Academy is a school for new music and a laboratory for the future. In traditional conducting education, not just is contemporary music often overlooked, it is also the collaborative approach, the artistic investigation and the broad aesthetic perspective that comes with new music that are often left aside.
Conductors are multipliers, they are often in a position to implement new ideas, instigate change and bring new initiatives into the music scene. Together with Felix Heri, the Head of the Lucerne Festival Academy Brönnimann was aiming for a conducting program that took into account the multiple aspects of what conducting means in the 21st century. The program is specifically designed not for specialists in contemporary music, but for conductors who are at the beginning of a professional career in order to broaden their minds and to create the forward -thinking and visionary conductors who can lead the classical music scene into the future.
The Lucerne Contemporary Conducting Program was designed to focus on the present and the future instead of the past. We firmly believe that in order to address the central issues of our time and the wider public, education for conductors needs to include:
Social and artistic leadership skills
Repertoire knowledge outside of the traditional orchestral repertoire (historic music, contemporary music, repertoire generally overlooked by orchestras)
Presentation and communication skills
The ability to create and present innovative and inspired educational projects.
The capacity to think outside of the classical music box