Tenth Fritz Gerber Award

On Saturday, 14 September, the three winners of this year’s Fritz Gerber Award, the 10th edition of the prize, will be celebrated an an event hosted by the Fritz Gerber Foundation. The Fritz Gerber Foundation has been supporting talented young people in the fields of crafts, culture, and sport since 1999.

In 2015, Michael Haefliger, Executive and Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival, joined with the Foundation to launch the Fritz Gerber Award for young Swiss musicians in the field of contemporary classical music. Every year, each award winner receives a cash prize as well as an opportunity sponsored by the Foundation to take part in the Lucerne Festival Academy.

This year's Fritz Gerber Award has been given to the young talents Phoebe Bognár (flute), Francisco Morais Fernandes (piano), and Santiago Villar Martín (percussion). In the Festival’s 40min series on 12 September, the three musicians will demonstrate their talents by performing works by Luciano Berio, Marcos Balter, Christina Kubisch, and Enno Poppe.

Of the collaboration with the Fritz Gerber Foundation, Michael Haefliger says: “Supporting young musical talent is an important focus for Lucerne Festival. We do this through our Music for Future and Debut series, as well as in the Lucerne Festival Academy, which this year celebrates its 20th birthday. Over a period of three weeks, some 110 instrumentalists, 12 composers, and four conductors from all over the world come to Lucerne to devote themselves intensively to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries at the Lucerne Festival Academy, the only one of its kind in the world. The Fritz Gerber Award provides an additional motivation in particular for musicians living in Switzerland to take part in this program supporting young talent. I wish all the best to the three award winners this year for their future careers!”