Michel Runtz
Franco-Swiss composer and pianist, Michel Runtz was born in Paris in 1955 and lives mainly in Switzerland.
He is the founding president of the Jeune Musique Association and of the Friborg International Piano Competition, a competition devoted to the piano repertoire of the 20th and 21st centuries, for young people up to 18 years old.
Michel Runtz writes to communicate the emotion felt in front of a text, a film, a play, but also in front of the aesthetics of certain painters, the contrasts of the material… the beauty they contain. This “response” echoing other creations, the composer gives it in a musical language that never seeks to mislead the listener, but which instinctively leads him towards transparency and simplicity.
His works immerse us in a harmonic universe which is located in a kind of “in-between” which reveals a mixed music.
Michel Runtz has already performed his works in China, France, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Russia and Switzerland. His compositions appear more and more often among the pieces proposed for international competitions and on the program of recognized performers such as Irina Kataeva, Fanny Clamagirand, Vanya Cohen, Jay Gottlieb, William Chen, Simone Keller, Boris Baraz…
Notes and Light, concert by Michel Runtz based on a new concept integrating a light creation, is presented in Düdingen (creation) and within the framework of the Murten Classics Festival 2009 as well as in China (Shanghai and Shenyang).
In 2009, Michel Runtz wrote the original music for Isabelle Dufour’s film “And in the middle flows the Sarine” (Fribourg).
As part of the France-Russia Year, Michel Runtz is composing all of the required pieces for the 2010 Concertino Ensemble Piano Festival Competition in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia). These are pieces for piano(s) with 4, 6 and 8 hands.
Between 2013 and 2016, several masterclasses and concerts took place around the chamber music and piano pieces of Michel Runtz at the popular conservatory of Geneva, at the conservatories of Strasbourg and Rueil-Malmaison.
Michel Runtz is invited by the composition department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to give lectures on his writing and his works. A concert of his compositions is presented by various Chinese chamber musicians and soloists.
The duo Olga Malisova & Michael Schreider recorded in London the works for piano 4 hands by Michel Runtz.
In 2018, Michel Runtz received the Claude Blancpain Foundation Prize (Switzerland) for the foundation of the Young Music Association, for the sustainability of the Friborg International Piano Competition and the new influence of Friborg on the international level through his project Freiburg – Shanghai.
Project that materializes in 2019 with the 1st Sino-Swiss International Piano Competition of Shanghai, for young people and with an exclusively 20th-21st century repertoire.
Michel Runtz has just finished composing an opera based on the work of Yasmina Khadra Cousine K.
The publication and distribution of the works of Michel Runtz are ensured by Editions Runtz Music Edition.
