Many conductors, as they travel ’round the world, play games of Dream Team – picking the best players from top orchestras and imagining how the all-star orchestra would sound. Mostly, it’s an excercise of imagination. But Claudio Abbado, “presiding at this summer’s Lucerne Festival, has cherry-picked players from symphony and chamber orchestras, string quartets and solo rosters to form an ensemble that will be the envy of Salzburg and a thumb in the eye for the Berlin Philharmonic, from whom Abbado parted company last year. Such dreams can come true only at festival time. In permanent orchestras, maestros get along with tenured musicians of uneven temperament and with the human clay thrown up at auditions.”