Heinz Holliger

Born in 1939 in Langenthal, in the Swiss canton of Bern, Heinz Holliger studied oboe with Émile Cassagnaud and Pierre Pierlot, piano with Sava Savoff and Yvonne Lefébure, and composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez in Bern, Paris, and Basel. His career as an oboist began in 1959, when he won First Prize at the Geneva International Music Competition; in 1961, he also took First Prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and made his debut at the Internationale Musikfestwochen Luzern (IMF), now nown as Lucerne Festival, performing Veress’s Passacaglia concertante. Holliger has expanded the technical possibilities of the oboe and remains a passionate advocate of contemporary music and lesser-known repertoire; numerous composers have dedicated new works to him. He began his conducting career in 1977 and has since worked with leading orchestras and ensembles worldwide. In 1998, he appeared as composer-in-residence at the IMF Luzern, presenting his own music. His opera Schneewittchen received its world premiere in Zurich in 2002; in 2018, Zurich also saw the premiere of Lunea, his opera based on scenes from the life of Nikolaus Lenau. His extensive, prize-winning discography ranges from Baroque oboe repertoire to complete recordings of the Schubert symphonies, orchestral works by Schumann and Koechlin, and numerous recordings of his own compositions. An honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2016, Holliger has received numerous awards, including the Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1987), the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (1991), the Zurich Festival Prize (2007), the Swiss Grand Prix Music (2015), the City of Zwickau’s Robert Schumann Prize (2017), the Schumann Prize of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (2022), and the Alban Berg Ring (2024).

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 31 August 1961 as the oboist in Veress’s Passacaglia concertante; last appearance here was on 29 August 2021, when he conducted the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) in works of his own and Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music.

September 2026