Lucerne Festival Strings

The Lucerne Festival Strings rank among Switzerland's foremost chamber orchestras, maintaining an extensive touring schedule and encompassing an unusually broad spectrum of repertory. Its exceptionally large recorded legacy, which extends to the 1950s, features some of the earliest efforts to present Baroque works on disc.

Rudolf Baumgartner, violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and Lucerne Festival director Walter Strebi established the ensemble in 1956; its debut took place on August 26 of that year at the Lucerne International Music Festival. Baumgartner, who served as music director until 1998, chose the name and insisted that the English phrase Festival Strings remain constant while the word order alone shifted to Festival Strings Lucerne for French- and German-speaking listeners. The group continues to collaborate closely with the Lucerne Conservatory and appears regularly at the KKL Lucerne Concert Hall.

Although the Strings concentrated on Baroque repertory in its formative decade—an approach then uncommon—it subsequently embraced contemporary scores and has given more than 100 premieres, among them pieces by Frank Martin, Iannis Xenakis, and Krzysztof Penderecki. From its earliest seasons the ensemble drew internationally renowned soloists such as violinist David Oistrakh, cellist Pablo Casals, and pianist Clara Haskil. Built around a nucleus of 21 players, the orchestra augments its forces for larger scores and, since the 2010s, has regularly presented symphonic works. It bears no relation to the seasonal Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Only three conductors have led the Strings: Baumgartner was followed by Achim Fiedler, after which violinist-conductor Daniel Dodds assumed the post in 2012.

The ensemble's extensive discography, begun in the 1950s, includes the first LPs of Baroque music issued on Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv imprint, an early champion of that repertoire. In the digital period the Strings have recorded for Deutsche Grammophon and RCA; since 2020 they have appeared on Warner Classics, where they accompanied violinist Midori in her initial account of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61.