Lucerne Festival
With deep-rooted art and music culture, the City of Lucerne is a renowned Festival City and famous for its Lucerne Music Festival, which attracts over 100,000 music lovers across the globe throughout the three seasons annually. Lucerne Festival looks back on a long tradition of own orchestras that began in 1938 with Arturo Toscanini and the legendary Concert de Gala. Nowadays, Lucerne Festival has already become one of the most important music festivals, both in Switzerland and internationally. The Festival is composed of three separate occasions every year: at Easter, in Summer and at the Piano.

In 2009, on the initiative of Maestro Claudio Abbado and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger, this world-renowned festival is for the first time coming to China in September and will hold a series of orchestra concerts, chamber music concerts with other activities such as master classes at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the top sanctuary of music in China.

Mahler Chamber Orchestra
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) was founded in 1997 by former members of the  Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and is dedicated to repertoire that ranges from works for larger ensemble through the symphonic literature to classical opera and world premieres. A total of 42 musicians from 22 nations form the core of this independently financed orchestra, which can also be augmented with additional forces as needed. Along with cofounder Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding has had a lasting influence on the orchestra's evolution, first as its principal guest conductor and then, as of 2003, as principal music director. Since 2008 he has been chief conductor. The orchestra had its breakthrough to international acclaim as early as 1998 with a new production of Don Giovanni at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, conducted by Claudio Abbado. Eminent productions that ensued have included Britten's The Turn of the Screw (production by Luc Bondy) and of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (in the Irina Brook production), under the baton of Daniel Harding. Patrice Chéreau directed Mozart's Così fan tutte (2005) and Janáček's From the House of the Dead (2007) in productions that also appeared in Vienna and Amsterdam. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra gives two annual concert series in Ferrara, Italy. Since 2003 the musicians of the MCO have performed as guest artists with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, in addition to their own appearances as the MCO. Throughout its artistic development, the MCO has attracted renowned guest conductors and soloists, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Philippe Herreweghe, Christopher Hogwood, and Paavo Järvi as well as Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Cecilia Bartoli, and Christian Tetzlaff.