Normally the roles are clear: the orchestra sits onstage, and the audience listens from the hall. That’s where the sound blends best, of course. But it raises an intriguing question: how does the orchestra itself experience a concert, and what does the conductor actually hear? “Mittendrin” gives you the answer. You take your seat right among the musicians, who are spread out a bit more widely than usual so that extra chairs can be positioned to accommodate you as guests. Iván Fischer, a master of imaginative ideas, invented this wonderfully offbeat format at the Konzerthaus Berlin and now brings it to Lucerne. He conducts a suite from Sergei Prokofiev’s enchanting ballet Cinderella, and you watch him from just a few feet away, as if you were part of the orchestra. “What you experience is simply fantastic,” Fischer says. “You notice countless new details — you hear some instruments right up close, others from farther away. And you feel the players right beside you. The balance isn’t as refined as it is in the hall, but the intensity is incomparable! You’ll never forget it.”

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Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Béla Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin captures the raw, gritty pulse of the modern metropolis. The action unfolds in a seedy den where a young woman lures passersby inside. But instead of finding the pleasure they came for, they are quickly overpowered and robbed by her accomplices — until a mysterious stranger, the Mandarin, falls into the trap . . . The world premiere in 1926 caused such an uproar in Catholic Cologne that the mayor — none other than the future German chancellor Konrad Adenauer — banned the work outright. Bartók then prepared a concert version, though he was never happy with it. “This work is a pantomime with music; both elements should be performed together,” he wrote in the score.

Budapest Festival Orchestra | Eva Duda Dance Company | Iván Fischer | Elisabeth Leonskaja

Boston Lyric Opera joins Vivo Performing Arts in their presentation of Mahler’s Third Symphony. A colossal masterpiece featuring two choirs, an expanded orchestra, and an alto soloist, this epic work embraces the forces of nature, the exuberance of life, the innocence of childhood, and the transcendent beauty of love.

Mahler Symphony No. 3

Boston Symphony Orchestra

"An overwhelming piece of music with extreme emotions, phenomenally crafted, beautiful, wild, and very erotic," raved the British Guardian when the Budapest Festival Orchestra, with its founder and chief conductor Iván Fischer, released a recording of Richard Strauss's "Joseph's Legend" in 2018. Indeed, the story of the pious Joseph, who is first seduced and then coldly betrayed by the wife of the Egyptian court official Potiphar in the palace, leaves nothing to be desired musically – not least because Strauss deploys just about everything an orchestra has to offer: huge string and wind sections, several harps, piano, six timpani, castanets, and even an effervescent wind machine. A sound spectacle for which the Grand Hall of the Elbphilharmonie provides the ideal acoustics.

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Aug 22, 2026

Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer

Aug 21, 2026

Budapest Festival Orchestra | Eva Duda Dance Company | Iván Fischer | Elisabeth Leonskaja

Budapest Festival Orchestra