One of Classical Music’s Great Builders Prepares for the Next Step

Michael Haefliger has made a life out of building music festivals.

A Juilliard-trained violinist, he came up with the idea not long after finishing school to create the Davos Festival in Switzerland for young artists. Then, a quarter century ago, he took over the established, expansive Lucerne Festival, which opens on Friday with a performance by the orchestra he founded.

Now 63, Haefliger has enjoyed rare success in classical music: His long tenure at Lucerne has been defined not only by sustainability and survival through crises like the coronavirus pandemic, but also by enormous growth.

He started the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with the eminent conductor Claudio Abbado; with the iconoclast Pierre Boulez, he created the festival’s academy; when Japan was hit by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in 2011, he spearheaded Ark Nova, an inflatable, portable concert hall that brought the festival to Matsushima.

Over time, Haeflinger has lost major collaborators. Abbado died in 2014; Boulez, two years later. Wolfgang Rihm, Boulez’s successor, died last month. (Riccardo Chailly, who took over the Festival Orchestra after Abbado, will lead Rihm’s “Ernster Gesang” at the opening concert.)

“He was quite a strong figure,” Haefliger said of Rihm in a recent phone interview. “The way he saw things and programming was very open. He didn’t remain in his own school and tradition, which is important today in contemporary music.”

Rihm’s contributions to the 2025 festival were already settled before his death. That year will also be Haefliger’s farewell; he steps down as artistic and executive director next summer. What comes after that for the academy, and Lucerne in general, will be up to the next leader, Sebastian Nordmann, from the Konzerthaus in Berlin.