Positive results for the 67th LUCERNE FESTIVAL, SOMMER 2005 Following a full 39 festival days and more than 80 events and 15 first perform­ances, the 67th edition of LUCERNE FESTIVAL, SOMMER 2005, slowly draws to a close. LUCERNE FESTIVAL has, once again, proven to be a platform for world-class symphony orchestras, both as a focus of sophisticated, contem­porary music programming and an institution that dedicates its every effort to promoting and encouraging new talents. With its 39 festival days, SOMMER 2005 has been the longest festival to date. In spite of a total of 7 cancelled concerts due to the flood, the budgeted ticket turn­over was reached and even clearly surpassed. However, turnover losses due to the cancelled concerts amounted to CHF 400,000. Without these cancellations, the turn­over from ticket sales for SOMMER 2005 would have been the second highest every reached. 22 concerts were sold out, 16 of them symphony concerts. The overall ca­pacity reached about 90% for all of the 66 concerts, which equals last year’s results. All in all, about 80,000 visitors attended the festival. Claudio Abbado and the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA firmly established themselves as fixed stars on the festival sky of Lucerne in this third year of their joint performances. This autumn, the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA will start on its first foreign tour to Rome from October 6 till October 12. The organizer in Rome is the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The programme will include five sym­phony concerts with Martha Argerich and Maurizio Pollini as so­loists. The same as at LUCERNE FESTIVAL, the orchestra will show its versatility not only at the symphony concerts but at numerous chamber-music concerts, too. «New Frontiers» as a festival theme was predestined for the MODERNE series of programmes within whose scope a total of 15 first performances could be launched. Five of these first performances particularly focused on contemporary Swiss music. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY has proven its worth in this third summer of its existence. More than 130 students from 34 countries performed at 7 concerts and 11 forum events. From 2006 till 2008, a new three-years’ cycle will begin, focussing in 2006 on con­temporary vocal music. Thanks to the help of sponsors and partners, LUCERNE FESTIVAL is able to realize artistic ventures that, as a rule, would go beyond the scope of normal budgets. Sponsors enable us to realize the idea of our orchestras-in-residence, support our promotion of young talents such as the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY and the Prix CREDIT SUISSE Jeunes Solistes, and moreover stand for pioneering co-opera­tion models to promote contemporary music such as the Roche Commissions. Our prospects for the future are good. On the one hand, long established partner­ships could be confirmed and prolonged, for instance those with Nestlé and Siemens Building Technologies, and on the other one, Montres Breguet SA will enter upon a new partnership as main sponsor of LUCERNE FESTIVAL starting in 2006. More than 200 representatives from the media were accredited with LUCERNE FESTIVAL, SOMMER 2005, as reporters for the print media, TV, radio, and the Inter­net. 23 concerts were broadcast by SR DRS and international radio stations. Helmut Lachenmann, our composer-in-residence, also reaped great acclaim from the media. LUCERNE FESTIVAL and the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA was and will be present on ARTE on three dates at the beginning of September and October – a small echo of a long and successful festival summer in Lucerne.