Among major European festivals, the Lucerne Festival is outstanding in the attention it pays to contemporary music. The latest manifestation of this is the founding of an annual Lucerne Festival Academy for young professional players, specializing in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, under the leadership of Ensemble Intercontemporain and the indefatigable Pierre Boulez. Nor is this is on the modest scale of a ‘young Sinfonietta’: its final concert, conducted by Boulez, began with Harrison Birtwistle's massive Earth Dances.