One year following the announcement of the establishing of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Claudio Abbado as Chief Conductor, the planning of this truly fascinating project has advanced a lot. Musicians such as Kolja Blacher, Renaud Capuçon, Lukas Hagen and Rainer Kuss-maul (violin), Wolfram Christ, Veronika Hagen und Diemut Poppen (viola), Georg Faust, Natalia Gutmann and Clemens Hagen (violoncello), Alois Posch (double-bass), Albrecht Mayer (oboe), Emmanuel Pahud (flute) und Sabine Meyer (clarinet) will meet at the musical stands of the new orchestra. The members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra will also participate in the LUCERNE FESTIVAL Orchestra. The musicians will meet in Lucerne at the beginning of August for a rehearsal phase and will open LUCERNE FESTIVAL, SOMMER 2003, on August 15, with a sym-phony concert conducted by Chief Conductor Claudio Abbado. The programme will include Wotan's farewell from The Valkyrie as well as the suite from Le Martyre de Saint Sébastian and La mer by Claude Debussy. The members of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL Orchestra will perform six chamber-music and two chamber-orchestra concerts in various groups which will, among others, in-clude works such as the Piano Quintet in E-flat major by Robert Schumann, the quintet Die Forelle by Franz Schubert with pianist Radu Lupu as well as the six Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach with Claudio Abbado. With two performances, Symphony No. 2 in C minor by Gustav Mahler on August 19 and 20, the first cycle of the newly established orchestra will end. And, of course, Chief Conductor Claudio Abbado will be at the musical stand of "his" new orchestra.