Louis Schwizgebel
Piano
Louis Schwizgebel was born in 1987 in Geneva. He studied first with Brigitte Meyer in Lausanne and Pascal Devoyon in Berlin, before joining the prestigious Juilliard School in New York where he worked with Emanuel Ax and Robert McDonald, and subsequently the Royal Academy of Music in London with Pascal Nemirovski. His competition record is remarkable: at just seventeen, he won the Geneva International Music Competition, and two years later, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. In 2012, he took second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, one of the most prestigious in the world, and in 2013 he was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist, a distinction that has launched the careers of many great performers.
The international press hails him as “a genuine virtuoso, a spirited young genius with real depth” according to Fono Forum, while the New York Times describes him as an “insightful musician”. His playing is consistently praised for its elegance, crystalline articulation, expressive lyricism and ever-renewed imagination.
On stage, he is regularly invited by the world’s finest orchestras. In 2014, he made his BBC Proms debut with a televised performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In 2018, he performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at the Festival de Radio France, again in front of the cameras. In 2023-2024, he toured with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Kazuki Yamada, with performances in Geneva, Zurich, Berne and Lucerne. He also appears with ensembles as varied as the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic and the Orchestre national de Metz at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
Schwizgebel is also a highly regarded chamber musician, regularly sharing the stage with artists such as Renaud Capuçon, Alina Ibragimova and Narek Hakhnazaryan. In recital and chamber music alike, he appears in the world’s greatest halls and festivals — Wigmore Hall in London, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Rheingau Festival and the Singapore International Piano Festival. True to his Swiss roots, he performs regularly in Switzerland, at the festivals of Verbier, Lucerne and Gstaad, the Septembre Musical de Montreux-Vevey, and in the Meisterinterpreten series at the Zurich Tonhalle.
His discography, released on the Aparté label, reflects the breadth and depth of his musical affinities. His recording of Schubert Sonatas D845 and D958 was hailed by Le Figaro as an album of extraordinary precision. His Saint-Saëns concertos, recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and his Beethoven Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, were both received with enthusiasm by leading publications such as Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, two of the most influential voices in classical music criticism worldwide.
