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 the most renowned and most successful Swiss musicians. In the current 2023/24 season David Philip Hefti will be Composer in Residence at the Zermatt Music Festival. The cornerstone of his engagement is the world première of Des Zaubers Spuren (Traces of Magic), an octet composed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin. Hefti will also be conducting the Zermatt Festival Orchestra and will supervise the students of the Zermatt Music Festival Academy. In September Des Zaubers Spuren will be given its German première at the Scharoun Ensemble’s anniversary concert in the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin. Another world premiere will follow in February 2024 with a new piece for solo violin as a compulsory piece at the Second International Violin Competition of the Guadagnini Foundation in Stuttgart, and in May 2024 the Stradivari Quartet will premiere Hefti's String Quartet No. 8 in Prague, Zurich and Basel. With Reigen (Round Dance) – Mosaik for violin and clarinet, the collaboration with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and clarinettist Reto Bieri is to be continued, and Reinhold Friedrich is planned to perform Fanfare für Wolfgang – for piccolo trumpet, a miniature for Wolfgang Rihm.
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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 a composer and conductor, David Philip Hefti is one of Switzerland's outstanding musicians. His catalogue of around 100 works includes orchestral, vocal and chamber music. Hefti was honoured with the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composer Prize in 2013, the Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in 2015 and the Composer Award of the International Classic Music Awards ICMA in 2023. He has also won the Pablo Casals Composition Competition in Prades, the George Enescu Composition Competition in Bucharest and the Gustav Mahler Competition in Vienna. His orchestral works have been performed by conductors including Peter Eötvös, Cornelius Meister, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott, Michael Sanderling, Mario Venzago and David Zinman.
In the 2023/24 season, David Philip Hefti was Artist in Residence at the Zermatt Music Festival. The focus was on the world premiere of the octet Des Zaubers Spuren to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Berlin Scharoun Ensemble. Hefti also conducted the Zermatt Festival Orchestra and acted as a mentor at the Zermatt Music Academy. In the Scharoun Ensemble's anniversary concert, the octet was given its acclaimed German premiere in the Berlin Philharmonie. The Berliner Tagesspiegel wrote: The royal crown goes to David Philip Hefti. In February 2024, Feu d'artifice for solo violin was premiered as a compulsory piece at the 2nd International Violin Competition of the Guadagnini Foundation in Stuttgart, and in May 2024, the Stradivari Quartet gave the world première of his 8th String Quartet in Prague. Paavo Järvi recently commissioned an orchestral work from Hefti for the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.
During the 2022/23 season, Rhapsody – for baritone and orchestra on texts by Sir Salman Rushdie was premiered with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. This was followed by Harmonia – for saxophone quartet with the Kebyart Ensemble and the premiere of Hefti's first ballet music Ans Ende der Zeit for Graz Opera. Walter Küssner and Diyang Mei, both violists with the Berliner Philharmoniker, performed the world premiere of Vier Anklänge – for two violas in a matinee for Tabea Zimmermann. At the end of the season, the successful collaboration with the Berlin Baroque Soloists was continued with a double premiere.
For the 150th anniversary of the Tonhalle Society Zurich, Hefti composed the music theatre piece Die Schneekönigin based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The composer himself conducted the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich at the semi-staged premiere in 2018. The CD recording was honoured with the Supersonic Award in 2020. Hefti's first opera Anna's Mask was premiered at the St. Gallen Theatre in 2017 under the direction of Otto Tausk, for the NZZ it was Glowing ecstasy... dazzling timbres that Hefti knows how to combine so masterfully.
His artistic partners include Juliane Banse, Mojca Erdmann, Antje Weithaas, Baiba Skride, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Lawrence Power, Christian Poltéra and Jan Vogler. As a conductor and composer, Hefti works with high-ranking orchestras such as the Ensemble Modern, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Bavarian State Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Invitations have taken Hefti to major music festivals from Wien Modern to Ultraschall Berlin, Lucerne Festival, Dvořák Festival Prague, Beijing Modern and the Suntory Festival in Tokyo.
Recent recordings include the opera Die Schneekönigin and the album Light and Shade with the Amaryllis Quartet (both on NEOS). Hefti made his debut as a conductor with Deutsche Grammophon with the CD Shades of Love: Klänge des K-Dramas. The album with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra reached number one in the Korean classical music charts.
David Philip Hefti was born in Switzerland in 1975. He studied composition, conducting, clarinet and chamber music at the music academies in Zurich and Karlsruhe with Cristóbal Halffter, Rudolf Kelterborn, Wolfgang Meyer, Wolfgang Rihm and Elmar Schmid.