David Philip Hefti composer / conductor
"Despite his classically avant-garde musical language, Hefti’s prime concern is expressiveness – addressing his listener with a candid eloquence." (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
As both composer and conductor, David Philip Hefti is one of Switzerland's outstanding musical personalities. He has composed over 100 works, including orchestral music, vocal works and chamber music. In the 2024/25 season, Hefti’s 6th String Quartet will be given its Berlin première by the Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet in the Pierre Boulez Saal, while his 7th String Quartet will be given its first Berlin performance by the Amaryllis Quartet at the Konzerthaus. Hefti’s world premieres for this season will include an orchestral work for the Zuger Sinfonietta, an a-cappella work for the Zurich Chamber Singers, and new cadenzas for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He will be working as a mentor with young composers in a collaboration between the Zurich University of the Arts and the Murten Classics Festival. He will also be conducting works by contemporary European and American composers in Boston in a concert featuring the Ecce Ensemble and members of the Berlin Philharmonic.
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"Despite his classically avant-garde musical language, Hefti’s prime concern is expressiveness – addressing his listener with a candid eloquence." (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
As both composer and conductor, David Philip Hefti is one of Switzerland's outstanding musical personalities. He has composed over 100 works, including orchestral music, vocal works and chamber music. In 2013, Hefti was awarded the Composer Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, in 2015 the Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and in 2023 the Composer Award of the International Classical Music Awards ICMA. He has also won the International Composition Competition of the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades, the George Enescu International Competition for Composition in Bucharest, and the Gustav Mahler International Competition for Composition in Vienna. His orchestral works have been performed by conductors such as Peter Eötvös, Cornelius Meister, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott, Kazuki Yamada, Giancarlo Guerrero, Andris Poga, Roberto Gonzáles-Monjas, Michael Sanderling, Mario Venzago and David Zinman.
In the 2024/25 season, Hefti’s 6th String Quartet will be given its Berlin première by the Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet in the Pierre Boulez Saal, while his 7th String Quartet will be given its first Berlin performance by the Amaryllis Quartet at the Konzerthaus. Hefti’s world premieres for this season will include an orchestral work for the Zuger Sinfonietta, an a-cappella work for the Zurich Chamber Singers, and new cadenzas for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He will be working as a mentor with young composers in a collaboration between the Zurich University of the Arts and the Murten Classics Festival. He will also be conducting works by contemporary European and American composers in Boston in a concert featuring the Ecce Ensemble and members of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Highpoints of the 2023/24 season for Hefti were his appointment as Composer in Residence, conductor and mentor at the Zermatt Music Festival, where his octet Des Zaubers Spuren (Traces of Magic) was first performed. It was composed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin and was subsequently also performed to an enthusiastic audience at the Ensemble’s jubilee concert in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, of which the Berliner Tagesspiegel commented that The royal crown belongs to David Philip Hefti.
For its 150th anniversary in 2018, the Zurich Tonhalle Society commissioned Hefti’s music-theatre work The Snow Queen, based on the eponymous fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The semi-staged world première of this musical tale took place in 2018, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra under the baton of the composer himself. Its CD recording was honoured with the Supersonic Award in 2020. His first opera, Anna’s Mask, was given its world première in 2017 at the St. Gallen Theatre under the baton of Otto Tausk. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote of its luminous ecstasy… iridescent timbres that Hefti is able to combine in such masterly ways.
Hefti’s musical partners have included Juliane Banse, Mojca Erdmann, Benjamin Appl, Antje Weithaas, Baiba Skride, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Lawrence Power, Christian Poltéra and Jan Vogler. As both conductor and composer, he has worked with top-class orchestras and ensembles including the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Bavarian State Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Baroque Soloists. He has been invited to renowned music festivals including Wien Modern, Ultraschall Berlin, the Lucerne Festival, the Dvořák Festival in Prague, Beijing Modern and the Suntory Festival in Tokyo.
Recent releases include the opera The Snow Queen and the album Light and Shade with the Amaryllis Quartet (both on NEOS). With the CD Shades of Love: Sounds of K-Drama, Hefti made his conducting debut with Deutsche Grammophon. This album with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra reached number one in the Korean classical music charts.
David Philip Hefti was born in Switzerland in 1975 and studied composition, conducting, clarinet and chamber music at the music academies of Zurich and Karlsruhe, where his teachers included Cristóbal Halffter, Rudolf Kelterborn, Wolfgang Meyer, Wolfgang Rihm and Elmar Schmid.