Shore thing ... Lucerne's Jean Nouvel-designed concert hall
There's something special about the Lucerne festival. It's not just that this tiny Swiss town, whose population is about half that of Southampton, has managed to build one of the world's great concert halls - a modernist masterpiece by Jean Nouvel, a surreal fantasy of wood, glass, and metal that makes the water of Lake Lucerne part of its foyer - or that it is situated in one of the most jaw-droppingly dramatic locations of any music festival anywhere.
No: it's the sheer quality of performers that Lucerne manages to attract, year on year. Pierre Boulez, Maurizio Pollini, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra all graced this year's summer festival, and a galaxy of pianistic talent - including Lucerne-based Russian virtuoso Andrei Gavrilov - make up this November's piano festival.
But the presiding genius of Lucerne, and embodiment of the festival's uncompromising commitment to quality, is conductor Claudio Abbado, who formed the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003.
It's a musical dream team, formed by a core of players from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra - itself a collection of Abbado's favourite players from the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra - augmented by Abbado's closest friends from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, as well as the incredible luxury of players from two of the world's greatest chamber ensembles, the Hagen and Alban Berg Quartets.
When I was there this August, I met the Alban Bergs' cellist - who wasn't even leading the section, such was the stellar line-up - who was playing Mahler for the first time, in the performances of the Sixth Symphony which opened this year's festival.
These were life-changing experiences. To hear more than a hundred players giving their musical souls for Abbado, and performing to the limits of their ability and intensity, was a devastating revelation of Mahler's most tragic yet life-affirming symphony.
Even as a listener, you can't help feeling inspired in Lucerne; the combination of the landscape, the music, and the world's most exciting performers creates an astonishing musical alchemy.
