And so it happened, and that was the start of my career. We had a lot of contemporary music, and it was like an anti-festival: anti-establishment, no stars, no Champagne, more improvised, introducing the productions the evening of the performance. Eventually I got a lot of attention in Switzerland and Germany, which led to Lucerne, which was like the complete opposite.
Lucerne may be more old-fashioned, but you have institutionalized putting female conductors and underrepresented composers in front of audiences who most likely just want the classics. What’s interesting and risky about this is that the festival is sustained by private funding.
It’s not the case that Switzerland is just a green place where there are artistically no problems. We have conservative audiences, and we have structured the program so we can find everybody’s needs. So, if I have a big sponsor who says, “I want Tchaikovsky,” then I will most likely have something to offer. I think we’ve done over 250 commissions, though.
How did some of your big initiatives at Lucerne come about?
I think the changing point for the Lucerne Festival was the new hall [designed by Jean Nouvel and completed in 2000], which inspired the challenge to redefine the festival. The two people I spoke to first were Claudio Abbado and Pierre Boulez. One day, Claudio said he wanted to do this orchestra, with artist friends that he had worked with at the Berlin Philharmonic and other orchestras. So, I called these people up and asked, “Are you interested?” Those were the shortest phone calls of my life.
Was it difficult to finance?
The budget was just 2 million euros (about $2.3 million at the time) more, so it wasn’t an expensive orchestra. It’s never that there’s money first and then the art follows; I still believe that when you have a great artistic culture, the money comes. The academy cost 4 million more, but I found the funders from people, foundations and companies.
How quick were audiences to buy into the Festival Orchestra and academy?
Some of them came in quite quickly with Abbado on the program. The academy, maybe, was a little bit more difficult because it was contemporary music. But in the long run it all worked out very well.
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