Eva Nievergelt, Soprano
Richly endowed with vocal studies with Kathrin Graf and Lied interpretation with Irwin Gage and Esther de Bros at the Zurich Conservatory, two years of piano studies with Christoph Lieske at the Winterthur Conservatory, further vocal studies with Vera Rozsa in London, Margreet Honig in Amsterdam, Barbara Martig-Tüller in Bern, Judy Natalucci in New York, and several master classes with Kurt Widmer, Julia Hamari, Brigitte Fassbänder and Peter Elkus, Eva Nievergelt entered in a rich and colorful freelance concert career.
She is a committed interpreter of a repertoire that covers a wide range of traditional opera and modern music theatre, classical-romantic as well as contemporary song, baroque as well as contemporary chamber music. At home in church music from her family background, as a soloist she is familiar with a colorful and varied selection of oratorios from the Baroque to the 20th century. As an interpreter of Lied and chamber music with a focus on contemporary ensemble pieces and musical theater, she maintains a continuous concert and stage activity.
She works in various chamber music formations; important impulses were provided by Luciano Berios Circles and Sequenza III (CNZ, Davos Festival), Beat Furrer’s Aria (CNZ, ensemble courage, Heidelberger Frühling), Le Marteau sans Maître by Pierre Boulez (ensemble aisthesis Heidelberg, ensemble notabu Düsseldorf), Ensemblebuch II by Rudolf Kelterborn (Radio Lugano), II. Kammersinfonie von Jorge E. López (Klangforum Wien), Quatre Chants pour franchir le Seuil by Gérard Grisey (NEC), 1 tag by Annette Schmucki (Absolut Trio), Seven Romances after Poems by A. Blok by Dmitri Schostakowitsch (Absolut Trio), as well as the long-standing collaboration with GNOM, Group for New Music, Baden.
The Lied repertoire is particularly close to her heart, especially the repertoire of the Second Viennese School, the turn of the 19th/20th century and the first half of the 20th century. She has given concert performances in duo with the pianists Paul Suits, Claudia Rüegg, Petra Ronner, Stefan Wirth and Elisa Christina Bachmann. She maintains a long-standing collaboration with the pianist Tomas Bächli. They have performed Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Erik Satie’s Socrate and have had several opportunities to perform the early versions of Arnold Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder for soprano, tenor and piano together with the tenor Valentin Johannes Gloor. They are intensively involved with the song works of Erich Itor Kahn, the Romanian composer Philip Herschkowitz and the Austrian composer Leopold Spinner.
Together with percussionist Christoph Brunner she formed the duo canto battuto which has built up an otherwise almost non-existent repertoire for voice and percussion through commissions; in recent years, thus, around twenty new works have been created for the duo. In addition to performances in Switzerland, canto battuto has given concerts in Germany, France, England, Poland and the USA. In 2006, the much-noticed production im delta der wörter with works by Annette Schmucki and Jean-Charles François, directed by Peter Schweiger, was created at the Lucerne Theatre. With Le grain de la voix – world premieres by Sam Hayden and blablabor (Annette Schmucki and Reto Friedmann) – the duo was invited to the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England in 2009. In 2010, they were guests at the TfNM Zurich with the production regen reiben – works by Rudolf Kelterborn, Thomas Kessler, William Blank, Gary Berger and Ernst Thoma. canto battuto created the music theatre productions Liederabend together with the pianist Regula Stibi and her toy pianos from 2013 to 2015, and Litanies de la vie I & II together with the actress Bettina Marugg and the director Dódo Déer in 2013 and 2016.
From 2002 to 2006 she was a member of the Cultural Commission of Baden, and from 2005 to 2010, together with Alfred Zimmerlin, she headed the Musikpodium der Stadt Zürich.
She has received several grants for her artistic work from the Aargauer Kuratorium.
Eva Nievergelt works as a singing teacher in Baden and Zürich and teaches singing methodology at the Basel Music Academy.