Oliver Schnyder

The Swiss pianist Oliver Schnyder, who was born in 1973 in Brugg (canton of Aargau), received his training under Emmy Henz-Diémand and Homero Francesch at the Zurich Academy of Music. He subsequently perfected his playing in Leon Fleisher’s class in Baltimore (Maryland). In 1999 he won the Pembaur Competition in Bern, and in the following year he triumphed at the Schumann Competition in Zwickau. Since making his debuts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (2000) and with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (2002), Schnyder has pursued an intensive international concert career. As a soloist, for example, he has performed with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under Semyon Bychkov, with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Philippe Jordan, and with the Tchai-kovsky Symphony Orchestra Moscow under Vladimir Fedoseyev. In the 2014-15 season he will make his debuts with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and will also complete a tour with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields led by Julia Fi-scher. In addition, the Bern Symphony Orchestra has named him its first-ever “artiste étoile” and will tour with him to Great Britain. Schnyder is passionately committed to chamber music – for example he has collaborated with the violinists Julia Fischer and Veronika Eberle, the cellist Sol Gabetta, and the tenor Daniel Behle. In 2012, together with the violinist Andreas Janke and the cellist Benjamin Nyffenegger, he founded the Oliver Schnyder Trio, which released its first CD in 2013, a recording of Schubert’s piano trios. Schnyder’s discography also encompasses piano concertos by Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, as well as two solo albums of works by Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. His recordings have received such accolades as the Choc de Classica and the Diapason d’Or.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on 9 September 2010, with the violinist Veronika Eberle, in a program of works by Schumann, Janácek, and Prokofiev.

August 2014