Riccardo Chailly conducts Rachmaninov — With Beatrice Rana

An all-Rachmaninov extravaganza rings out at the 2025 Lucerne Festival, featuring two of today's greatest classical artists from Italy: maestro Riccardo Chailly and piano virtuoso Beatrice Rana! Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra open with The Rock, an immersive symphonic poem dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov and admired by Tchaikovsky, with an evocative epigraph from Lermontov: "The golden cloud slept through the night / Upon the breast of the giant-rock." The effervescent Rana then sets her sights on the formidable Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a de facto concerto that requires Lisztian dexterity and Chopinian sensitivity, particularly in the heartstopping 18th Variation. The program closes with the First Symphony, whose underprepared premiere was such a catastrophe that it derailed the composer's career for several years — but which, he would be gratified to learn, has found no shortage of champions in the 21st century among artists and listeners alike.

Photo © Priska Ketterer