© Christian Favre
Christian Favre
Christian Favre, born in 1955 in Lausanne, is a Swiss pianist, composer, and pedagogue. In 1975, he was awarded a First Prize for virtuosity in the class of Louis Hiltbrand. He continued his training with Karl Engel in Hanover, Stefan Askenase in Bonn, Guido Agosti in Siena, and Nikita Magaloff in Montreux.
Over the course of his career, he has performed under the direction of conductors such as Armin Jordan, Tibor Varga, and Christian Zacharias. Deeply committed to exploring the connections between music and literature, he has created recital programmes combining texts and works centred on figures such as Franz Liszt and Victor Hugo, Robert Schumann and E. T. A. Hoffmann, Maurice Ravel and Aloysius Bertrand, as well as Frédéric Chopin and George Sand.
A passionate chamber musician, he has collaborated with numerous instrumentalists and ensembles, notably the Schumann Quartet, of which he was the pianist for over twenty years. He has also accompanied singers such as Felicity Lott, Philippe Huttenlocher, and Marie-Claude Chappuis. His career has taken him to many European cities, where he has built an extensive discography and appeared in various radio and television programmes.
As a composer, he is the author of a Requiem for choir, soloists, and orchestra, premiered in 2008 in Buenos Aires. He has also written several chamber works, which he performs himself, and has produced transcriptions of works by Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler. In 2021, he adapted the Kindertotenlieder and composed 12 Instantanés for piano, followed in 2022 by a quintet for clarinet and strings. His opera Davel was premiered in 2023 in Lausanne.
Alongside his artistic career, he teaches at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne, gives masterclasses in Switzerland and abroad, and founded the Lausanne Music Performance Competition. Through these activities, he plays an active role in contemporary musical life.
