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From Chineke! to a beguiling Golda Schultz, the Swiss fixture made a bold and varied return, but the Vienna Phil stole the showIn the wanton days when air travel was king, pre-planetary concerns, pre-Covid, one aspect of musical life was a given. Elite orchestras crisscrossed the globe in a ritual dance every summer, looping through each other’s schedules and coming together in the weft of arrival or departure. Edinburgh and the Proms were fixtures, with several leading European venues, among them the annual festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, founded in 1938 and one of the oldest of its kind.This year, if with caution, some still masked, orchestras are travelling once more. Their plans to offset carbon omissions remain vague, but these are hard times and we await patiently. The Lucerne festival – which already has an exemplary sustainability programme – was back to full strength, welcoming the world’s top ensembles and soloists to its many-layered season. Its important contemporary strand featured the British composer Thomas Adès, with the premiere of his festival commission, Air, for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. (Further performances for those of us who missed it are scheduled next year for the US, but none as yet for the UK.) Continue reading...