The work of Swiss conductor Manuel Oswald is shaped by a deep culture of listening, nuanced communication and a profound understanding of musical processes, qualities rooted in his many years of experience as a professional chamber musician. Raised in French-speaking Switzerland and now based in Zurich, he studied violin and chamber music with, among others, Rainer Schmidt, Walter Levin and the Hagen Quartet in Basel and at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He later completed his postgraduate conducting studies (MAS) with Johannes Schlaefli at the Zurich University of the Arts. Particularly formative were his work with Sir András Schiff on a holistic approach to musical works within the quartet, and, in contemporary music, his experience working under Pierre Boulez as a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra.
Since 2021, he has devoted himself exclusively to conducting. He is currently conductor of the Stadtorchester Luzern and the Philharmonisches Orchester Riehen.
Manuel began his professional career as a member of the Gémeaux Quartet, a prizewinner at the 2008 ARD International Music Competition, and later the Merel Quartet, both firmly established on the international concert scene. Alongside his performing career, he taught chamber music at the music universities in Basel and Lucerne. From 2017 to 2023, as Co-Artistic Director of the Monuments Musicaux chamber music festival in Basel, he devoted particular attention to developing innovative concert formats.
Artistic highlights of the past season included Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique in Basel and a major concert at KKL Lucerne involving more than 100 musicians, in which Manuel conducted works by French women composers.
Among the works and projects shaping Manuel’s coming season are Brahms’s Second Symphony alongside the world premiere of a work by Alexander Sloendregt, as well as a return to KKL Lucerne with Schumann’s Third Symphony and the Swiss folk music ensemble Ambäck.
Chamber music remains at the heart of Manuel’s artistic thinking: the dynamic relationship between the individual and the collective. For him, even the largest symphony is grounded in the same principles as a string quartet: the quality of attention, trust, and the cultivation of mutual listening.
This perspective also takes Manuel beyond the traditional concert setting. Drawing on his musical work as well as his longstanding practice and training in mindfulness, he develops new concert formats that place the act of listening itself at the centre. His work explores how the conditions before, during and after a concert can be shaped so that music can be experienced more directly, audiences can deepen their connection with their own perception, and a shared space of listening can emerge between audience and musicians.