in person

BIO

Oliver Schnyder has repeatedly been compared in the media (e.g, by the Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung) with his great compatriot Edwin Fischer, while he has also been called a 'poet' (by the German Music magazine Fono Forum and the German stations NDR and ARD) and a 'Swiss star of the keys' (in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung). Since his successful solo debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra under David Zinman at the Music Festival Days of the Orpheum Foundation in 2002, he has established an intensive concert career all across the world and is today counted among those Swiss classical musicians who are most in demand. His performances have been accorded praise such as 'the highest perfection' (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), 'a musical sensation' (Süddeutsche Zeitung) and 'aristocratic musicianship' (Washington Post). Recently, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote of a performance he gave in the Zurich Tonhalle:

'What a cosmos of time and sound he here unfolds before us! How finely he weighs every movement of the music! The exquisite agogic shaping of the chronological strata of the left and right hands allows them to become subtly audible and tangible. This is a pianism that is at once analytically conscious, and yet strives to mould the music into a whole. The musician behind it all feels very precisely where the heart of the work lies'.

As a soloist and chamber musician, Oliver Schnyder has performed at the world's most important venues, as for example in Amsterdam (the Concertgebouw), Bonn (Beethovenhaus), Brussels (the Palais des Beaux Arts), Geneva (the Victoria Hall), Hamburg (the Laeiszhalle), London (the Wigmore Hall), Lucerne (the KKL), Milan (the Sala Verdi), Moscow (the Great Hall und the Tschaikowsky Hall), Munich (the Herkulessaal and the Gasteig), New York (the Carnegie Hall), St. Petersburg (the Philharmonc Hall), Tokio (the Opera City Concert Hall), Washington (the Kennedy Center), Zurich (the Tonhalle) and at similar venues in San Francisco, Beijing, Osaka, Frankfurt, Salzburg, Lisbon, Hong Kong, Montreal, Oslo, Paris and Chicago. He has furthermore been invited to play at the festivals of Lucerne, Schwetzingen, Zurich, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lugano, at the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, the Ernen Piano Week, the Musiksommer Boswil (Festival Artist 2008) and many more.

Oliver Schnyder has played with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio, the WDR Cologne Symphony Orchestra, the Basle Symphony Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, the Georgian Chamber Orchestra of Ingolstadt, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Israel Sinfonietta, the Oslo Camerata, the Camerata Berne , the Camerata Schweiz, the Festival Strings Lucerne and others, under conductors such as Semyon Bychkov, David Zinman, Mario Venzago, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Muhai Tang, Jac van Steen, John Axelrod, Douglas Bostock, Helmut Müller-Brühl, Ariel Zuckermann, Achim Fiedler and Howard Griffiths. In the 2011/12 season, Oliver Schnyder will give his debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of Philippe Jordan.

Chamber music and lied accompaniment have brought Oliver Schnyder together with the Amar Quartet, the casalQuartett, the Carmina Quartett, Daniel Behle, Veronika Eberle, Julia Fischer, Homero Francesch, Sol Gabetta, Jan-Erik Gustafsson, Rachel Harnisch, Claudius Herrmann, Erich Höbarth, Henning Kraggerud, Roby Lakatos, Wolfgang Mayer, Noëmi Nadelmann, Bartek Niziol, Christian Poltéra, Julian Rachlin, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Lars Anders Tomter, Stefan Tönz, Rudens Turku, Wen-Sinn Yang, Marina Yakovleva and Jacques Zoon. Schnyder also often plays in piano trios and quartet with the principals of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.

Schnyder's playing has been documented by numerous radio and TV recordings, such as for Swiss Radio DRS2 and Swiss TV SF1, the Radio Suisse Romande, the BBC, the Bavarian, North-German, Hessian and South-West-German Radio as well as for radio and TV stations in the USA and China.

After his highly-regarded debut CD for Sony RCA Red Seal (the Mozart double album Contrasts with piano concertos together with the Camerata Bern plus all of Mozart's piano works in the minor key), he published an album in June 2010 of piano works by Schumann (Fono Forum: 'This CD undoubtedly belongs among the most beautiful contributions to the Schumann year of 2010'; ARD and North German Radio: 'A subtle, very finely drawn portrait of Schumann... a recording for this Schumann year that leaves nothing to be desired').

Oliver Schnyder has released other CDs with labels such as Avie Records, ClassicO, Musiques Suisses, Solo Musica, Phoenix and Telos Records and has received high praise from the international specialized press. He also has a great interest in contemporary music. He has given several world premières and received work dedications, as in the case of the two piano concertos by David Noon. At present, Schnyder enjoys a close collaboration with the composer David Philip Hefti.

Oliver Schnyder was a student of Emmy Henz-Diémand and attended the masterclass of Homero Francesch in Zurich. He afterwards honed his pianism in the class of Leon Fleisher in Baltimore, USA.

Foto Tobias Frick

Oliver Schnyder plays Gabriel Fauré, Nocturne No. 1, op. 33