In a world where nationalities, languages and identities mix, enrich and sometimes clash, a recognition granted by one’s place of birth raises several questions. Indeed, I am the happy recipient of the cultural award from my town of Monthey, in the canton of Valais. If the desire to leave seized me very early in my…

When you play the piano, you are told since childhood that Liszt is a dubious  figure: first seen as womanizer who writes music for pianists who love to show off, then as an abbot whose obscure and mystical end of life has given birth to works that are never performed. He is never considered as…

It was in Berlin in 2007, and the audience in the Philharmonie, usually so well-behaved, applauded between the movements. It was simply impossible to keep to yourself the overwhelming emotions that Seiji Owaza and the Berliner Philharmoniker had unleashed in each of us. Their seventh Beethoven symphony had made us go from tears to ecstasy,…

Both Bach and Liszt are considered mystical composers. They were deeply religious and would spend much time in prayer, devoting their music to God. Even if the religion isn’t perceived the same way today, their relationship to something bigger than us all, and the door they open to this spiritual dimension is still actual and…

Behind the splendour of the Imperial city, hidden in between the pulse of a waltz, crawling behind the golden curtains of the palaces, the other face of Vienna shows up. The dark one, the tortured one, the one that Freud will unveil. It makes a brief appearance in one of Mozart’s only works composed in…

Facing exile as well as being away from homelands has been the source of inspiration and creativity for composers and musicians since centuries. Wagner composes his Wesendonck Lieder when he was banished from Sachsen and is forced to live in Zürich. Mahler refers to himself as being homeless and exiled threefold: „As a Bohemian among…

A score is comparable to the sketch of a canvas: outlines, dimensions and subject are there. It is up to the performer to respect and understand these basic data, and to put it into colour, perspective and enlighten it. Like a painter who chisels the detail of a flower, but keeps in mind its place…

Life captures movement. Out of lively pulse, rhythm originates, out of rhythm dances are born and dancing demands for music. The Partita by Bach consists of single movements and although the music only slightly reflects its origin, the actual compositional structure still reflects the moving rhythms of these antique dances. Centuries later, Zoltan Kodaly studies traditional…