Graziella Contratto

The Swiss conductor Graziella Contratto was born in 1966 in Schwyz. After training as a concert pianist, she studied conducting at the Basel Music Academy starting in 1991, where Rudolf Kelterborn, Detlev Müller-Siemens, Horst Stein, and Manfred Honeck were among her teachers. Conducting courses also led her to Jorma Panula. Contratto gained important experience as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Berlin Philharmonic and at the Salzburg Easter Festival, and also in 2001, when she rehearsed Mozart’s Così fan tutte in Ferrara. In 2000, she took over leadership of the newly founded Orchestra Academy at the Orchestre National de Lyon, and from 2003 to 2009 she was Chief Conductor of the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie, becoming the first woman to preside over a French state orchestra. She took over the directorship of Davos Festival — young artists in concert in 2007 for a period of seven years, curated the Ittingen Whitsun Concerts in 2015, and, from 2010 to 2022, headed the Department of Music at the Bern University of the Arts. As a conductor, Graziella Contratto has worked with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich; the Bamberger Symphoniker; the Bern Symphony Orchestra; the Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan; the Basel, Prague, and Zurich Chamber Orchestras; the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana; and the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, among others. The focus of her repertoire is on late Romanticism from Wagner onward and early Modernism, with a particular interest in the generation following Gustav Mahler. Contratto has also led world premieres and has, for example, introduced works by Jörg Widmann and Andrea Scartazzini. She has offered conducting workshops for managers in Switzerland and abroad since 2004 and is a regular guest on radio and TV programs. She successfully runs her own classical music label, Schweizer Fonogramm. Recipient of the 2015 Central Switzerland Culture Prize, she was also recently awarded the first-ever grant from the UBS Culture Foundation recognizing female conductors.

Lucerne Festival debut on 25 August 1996 in a matinee concert honoring the 90th birthday of Paul Sacher.

July 2022