“Like a cry of Nature”: thus the expression mark that opens Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony – and the programme of the Festival 2009 which takes up Nature as its guiding theme. Mahler, in the First Symphony, shaped the “cry of nature” into a musical vision of an entire human life in four stages – from a spring-like upsurge of feelings through desire and suffering, to the end of earthly existence and the entrance into Paradise.

Listeners are treated to a spectacular début by the twenty-two-year-old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang who plays Sergei Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. In her Lucerne appearance she displays the full range of her artistry as Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto demands not only lyricism and intimacy but brilliance and virtuosity.

Claudio Abbado has realised a dream with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The orchestra consists of an exclusive ensemble of hand-picked musicians such as Kolja Blacher and Sebastian Breuninger, Natalia Gutman, Clemens Hagen and Jens Peter Maintz.

Claudio Abbado is undeniably a supreme Mahler conductor and his best selling recordings with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – Symphonies No. 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 (on Blu-ray Nos 1, 2, 3 and 6), already released on EuroArts, have set new standards in interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler.

Recorded live at the Concert Hall of the Culture and Convention Centre Lucerne,  12 August 2009.

Picture format BD: 1080i Full HD - 16:9
Sounds formats BD: PCM 2.0, DTS HD Master Audio
Region code: All
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 79 mins
FSK: 0