The world famous Lucerne Festival Strings Ensemble, currently touring South Africa, is to appear with the KZN Philharmonic in Durban.

The Lucerne Festival Strings was established in 1956 by Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Rudolf Baumgartner and directed by Rudolf Baumgartner for more than 40 years until Achim Fiedler took over as Artistic Director in 1998. This ensemble regularly performs in the major music centres of Europe and goes on extended tours of other continents.

In the 50's, they toured Cuba and Iran, in the 70's through India, Australia and New Zealand and in the early 80's to Hong Kong and China. In the last few years, their work has included tours to the US, South America, South Africa and Japan. They play at the Lucerne Festival every year and are guests at other renowned festivals such as those of Salzburg, Prague, Edinburgh and Helsinki.

Since the very beginning, the company has worked with important soloists such as Pablo Casals, Clara Haskil and David Oistrakh and more recently with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Gidon Kremer, Frank Peter Zimmerman, Thomas Zehetmair, Ruth Ziesak, Elizabeth Leonskaja and Alexander Lonquich.

The Lucerne Festival Strings strive to establish a creative dialogue between old and new music. Their extensive repertoire reaches from works for string ensemble to works for a large chamber orchestra, from Baroque music (integrating the most recent knowledge on historical performance practices) to contemporary music.

During the almost 50 years of its existence, the group first performed more than 90 works of such renowned composers as Frank Martin, Bohuslav Martinu, Sándor Veress, Iannis Xenakis, Krzysztof Penderecki and Herbert Willi. Most of these compositions were specially commissioned for the Lucerne Festival Strings and its artistic directors. Countless recordings document the creative work of this renowned company.

In 1986 the "Lucerne Festival Strings Foundation" was created in collaboration with town and Canton of Lucerne and the ensemble is the resident group at the Lucerne Academy of Music.

The Lucerne Festival Strings perform with the KZN Philharmonic as part of its World Symphony Season Series on September 26 at 19h30 in the City Hall. Book at Computicket.