"The Night" was the motto of the Lucerne Summer Festival 2011. Under Sir Simon Rattle’s direction, the Berliner Philharmoniker explored in their Lucerne series Moving to Modern Times, the phenomenon of the night by pairing up in an outstanding concert the late romantic Anton Bruckner with England’s greatest modern composer, Benjamin Britten.

While Anton Bruckner’s 9th Symphony involves an inner journey, Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne extends into a trance-like meditation on dreaming, the latter presented by acclaimed tenor Ian Bostridge, whose "particular gift for lighting texts from within, and projecting so immediately their images, comes into its own arrestingly in the Nocturne", stated the Gramophone Magazine.

Photo: Priska Ketterer/LUCERNE FESTIVAL