Music Víkingur Ólafsson designs new piano festival in Lucerne
The new director of the Lucerne Festival has set a first accent: Sebastian Nordmann has engaged the keyboard virtuoso Víkingur Ólafsson as curator and soloist for a new three-year piano festival.
26.11.2025, 10:24
SDA
The new festival is called "Pulse" and is intended to follow the "rhythm of thinking and feeling", as Lucerne Festival announced on Wednesday. It will take place in two blocks from May 8 to 17.
Nordmann explained his decision to leave the curation of the new festival to Ólafsson by saying that the 41-year-old Icelander is not only a great pianist, but also a creative programmer. For Ólafsson, music is the "unifying form of all art forms", Nordmann is quoted as saying in the press release.
Ólafsson implements this concept with a combination of sound and light in the first part of the festival's program. He found a location for this outside the city of Lucerne, namely the Piuskirche in Meggen. There he will play Johann Sebastian Bach's "Goldberg Variations". The artist Ólafur Elíasson, also from Iceland, responded with a light installation. Lucerne Festival writes that visual art and music become a total work of art.
From May 14 to 17, the "Pulse" festival will take place at the KKL in Lucerne. In addition to Ólafsson, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the MDR Radio Choir, the Danish String Quartet, the pianist, conductor and composer Thomas Adès, the conductor Elim Chan and the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja will perform at a total of five concerts.
