Elena Schwarz
Conductor
Widely admired for her incisive knowledge of scores, Elena Schwarz brings a textural clarity and luminosity of sound to music from all eras, inspiring confidence and drawing the best from musicians whether conducting symphony orchestras, contemporary ensembles or opera productions.
Schwarz’s debuts in 2025–26 include SWR Sinfonieorchester, ORF Radio-Symfonieorchester Wien, Hallé Orchestra, Essener Philharmoniker and Residentie Orkest whilst return visits include performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and her fourth visit to the Lucerne Festival. Appointed Resident Conductor of Klangforum Wien from 2024, she is an enthusiastic advocate of new music, also working with specialist contemporary ensembles such as MusikFabrik, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Basel Sinfonietta and Ensemble Modern, championing works by Clara Iannotta, Lisa Streich, Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Nina Senk, Beat Furrer and Sarah Nemtsov, among others. She recently released a recording of works by Elsa Barraine with WDR Sinfonieorchester.
Schwarz is highly in demand as a guest conductor with orchestras in Europe, the US and Australia. In repertoire encompassing the symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler and works by Shostakovich and Stravinsky, she has conducted orchestras including Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, WDR Sinfonieorchester, San Diego Symphony, Bremen Philharmoniker and Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège.
A natural collaborator, she has worked with artists such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Marc-André Hamelin, Vikingur Olafson, Renaud Capuçon, Carolin Widmann, Leila Josefowitz, Tabea Zimmermann and Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Following an impressive operatic debut in 2019 at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence conducting Adam Maor’s The Sleeping Thousand, Schwarz conducted Saariaho’s Innocence at Dutch National Opera, winning five-star reviews and an immediate re-invitation. She has previously conducted Káťa Kabanová at Opéra de Lyon, Hansel & Gretel at Norwegian Opera, Rusalka at Opéra de Nice and Dora at Staatsoper Stuttgart. This season she conducts the World Premiere of Michel van der Aa Theory of Flames at Dutch National Opera and Innocence at Royal Danish Opera.
Schwarz won the Trondheim Competition and became a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018–19. Of Swiss and Australian parentage, she studied at Geneva Conservatoire and Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, followed by further studies with Peter Eötvös and Matthias Pintscher and masterclasses with Bernard Haitink and Neeme Järvi.
You can see Elena Schwarz live with the Auckland Philharmonia on Thursday 13 August at Sheku Plays Elgar.