For 2012 the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY has once again created a multifaceted programme to equip highly gifted young instrumentalists from around the world with the knowledge and skills they need to perform music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Framing it are two symphony concerts to be conducted by Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös, which will juxtapose key works of modernism – Arnold Schoenberg’s Expressionist monodrama “Erwartung” and Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony – with more recent compositions by Peter Eötvös, Jonathan Harvey, Tristan Murail, and this year’s composer-in-residence, Philippe Manoury. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY Orchestra and Pierre Boulez will perform one additional concert, following their stay in Lucerne, in Paris (Salle Pleyel) on 9 September 2012. The ensemble concert under the direction of the young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado will feature Manoury’s “Strange Ritual” as well as “La Chambre aux Échos” by Michael Jarrell – a work that the Ensemble intercontemporain will perform as well during the opening concert for this year’s Academy. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY will also break new ground with a music theater project to be produced in cooperation with LUCERNE FESTIVAL Young and Theater Basel: Manuel de Falla’s brief opera “Meister Pedros Puppenspiel” (“Master Peter’s Puppet Show”) – freely adapted from Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” – which is aimed specifically at young listeners and families. In addition there will be an evening of chamber music, master classes in conducting with Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös, the illuminating Academy Forum series – and of course the Open Stage and Spotlights series, in which Academy participants prepare their own concert programmes and strive to bridge the gap between various forms and styles of music. Find out more about LUCERNE FESTIVAL. (Source: Lucerne Festival Academy application brochure)