Heinz Holliger
“My entire relation to music is such that I always try to go to the limits.”
Heinz Holliger was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, in 1939. He pursued studies in composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez, and in parallel developed the talent which would see him recognised as one of the world’s outstanding oboists. Many composers have written works for him, including Frank Martin, Olivier Messiaen, Witold Lutoslawski, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elliott Carter, Hans Werner Henze, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Isang Yun. Holliger has also played a key role in the rediscovery of the music of neglected 18th-century masters such as Jan Zelenka, whose trio sonatas he has recorded for ECM.
Many of Holliger’s own compositions have been recorded by ECM, on albums including “Lieder [...]
“My entire relation to music is such that I always try to go to the limits.”
Heinz Holliger was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, in 1939. He pursued studies in composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez, and in parallel developed the talent which would see him recognised as one of the world’s outstanding oboists. Many composers have written works for him, including Frank Martin, Olivier Messiaen, Witold Lutoslawski, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elliott Carter, Hans Werner Henze, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Isang Yun. Holliger has also played a key role in the rediscovery of the music of neglected 18th-century masters such as Jan Zelenka, whose trio sonatas he has recorded for ECM.
Many of Holliger’s own compositions have been recorded by ECM, on albums including “Lieder ohne Worte” (2000), “Scardanelli-Zyklus” (2000), “Violinkonzert” (2004), and “Romancendres” (2009). Holliger has always been fascinated by artists living on the edge of society or at the edge of life; almost all his compositions bear testimony to a tireless search for the limits of sound and language. The composition process is often preceded by an intensive examination of artists' or poets' lives and lyrical texts; he has drawn inspiration from the writings of Hölderlin, Beckett, and Nelly Sachs, among others. Holliger’s first foray into opera, Schneewittchen ("Snow White"), which was premiered at the Zurich Opera in 1998, takes its libretto from an expressionist play by Swiss dramatist Robert Walser and was described by the BBC as “a fascinating labyrinth of interconnections and implications”. The ECM recording of Schneewittchen won a GRAMMY Award in 2002. As a conductor, Holliger has recorded an ECM album of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's music (“Canto di speranza”) in addition to leading recordings of his own works.
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