David Philip Hefti
Conductor / Composer
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 2025/26 season, David Philip Hefti will be active with numerous world premieres and projects. The season opens in August with his new orchestral work Schattenlinien for four natural horns and period orchestra – performed by Capella Augustina under the direction of Andreas Spering at the Brühl Palace Concerts. Hefti then serves as mentor for a project by the Zurich University of the Arts in cooperation with the Murten Classics Festival, the results of which will be premiered by the Ensemble Tonflug. In October, Hefti conducts musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Ecce Ensemble in Boston, presenting works by European and American composers – including a new composition of his own. In December, his trumpet double concerto Final(ment)e will be performed by the Stuttgart State Orchestra under the direction of Cornelius Meister. Spring 2026 is shaped by chamber music: At the Elbphilharmonie, a new duo for violin and cello will be performed by Hellen Weiss and Gabriel Schwabe. The Amaryllis Quartet will present his String Quartets No. 7 Ans Ende der Zeit (in Basel) and No. 8 Gesänge der Sehnsucht (in Wettingen). Camerata Variabile will give the premiere of a new work in Bern, Zurich, Basel, and Schaffhausen. Shortly thereafter, a new work for string orchestra will be premiered at the Tonhalle Zurich, performed by the Zurich Chamber Orchestra under Willi Zimmermann.
At the LiedBasel Festival, baritone Jonathan McGovern and pianist Judit Polgar will interpret a new song cycle based on poems by Dragica Rajčić. The season concludes with an a cappella work based on texts by Ovid, performed by the Zurich Chamber Singers under Christian Erny – with performances in Winterthur, Hamburg, and Bremen. A new orchestral work for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the direction of Paavo Järvi is already in preparation.
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.
Find further information on www.hefti.net.
Saison 2025/26
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