Lucerne Festival Academy 1

Pierre Boulez found purely electronic music and the use of pre-recorded tape in the studio equally unimpressive. What interested him was the live interaction between sounds actually produced in real time and electronically processed sounds. But he needed to create the right technical conditions. So in 1977 he founded the research institute IRCAM in Paris — and in the early 1980s he presented a trailblazing masterpiece that he continued to refine until his death: Répons. Seated in the center of the space, the ensemble responds to six soloists who are positioned on platforms around the audience. Their sounds are processed in real time by a computer and projected into the space via loudspeakers. In this way, a multidimensional “dialogue” is created — drawing on the tradition of Gregorian chant — between soloists and ensemble, instrumental sound and electronically processed sonorities. An overwhelming auditory experience! The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) will juxtapose this key work of contemporary music with a world premiere by the Japanese composer Dai Fujikura, whom Boulez championed at the Lucerne Festival Academy.