Georges and Louis Schwizgebel, father and son, offer a journey through animation and music, inspired by the legends of "The Damnation of Faust", "Cinderella", and "Erlking", in a dialogue between image and sound.

*The event is funded by the Home Affairs Department.

Animation by Georges Schwizgebel

Piano Performance by Louis Schwizgebel

Program:

Piano: Mendelssohn, Prélude op. 35 n. 5

Film: The Girl and the Clouds

Piano: Schubert-Liszt, Der Wanderer

Film: The Man Without a Shadow

Piano: Chopin, Mazurka op. 63 n. 3 – Nocturne op. 48 n. 1

Film: The Ride to the Abyss

Piano: Schubert, Sonate D. 958 4th movement

Film: Romance

Piano: Schubert-Liszt, Du bist die Ruh

Piano and film: Erlkönig

Georges Schwizgebel

Born 1944 in Switzerland, Georges Schwizgebel is a well-known figure in contemporary animation film. He has made 16 short films up until now and won numerous prizes at international film festivals. 78 R.P.M. (1985) and The Ride to the Abyss (1992) rank among the hundred most influential animated films on a list published by the Festival d’Annecy and the magazine Variety in 2006.

In 2002, The Girl and the Clouds won the Best Short Film Award and in 2016, Erlköing won the Best Animated Film Award in Swiss Film Awards. Schwizgebel received an Honorary Cristal at the Annecy Festival in 2017 and the Honorary Swiss Film Award in 2018. He was named a member of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2019 and was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at Animafest in Zagreb in 2020.

Louis Schwizgebel

Louis Schwizgebel was born in 1987 in Geneva. He studied with Brigitte Meyer in Lausanne and Pascal Devoyon in Berlin, and then later at the Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax and Robert McDonald, and at London’s Royal Academy of Music with Pascal Nemirovski. At the age of seventeen he won the Geneva International Music Competition and, two years later, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. In 2012 he won second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition and in 2013 he became a BBC New Generation Artist.

Schwizgebel has been described as “a genuine virtuoso, a spirited young genius with real depth” (Fono Forum) and an “insightful musician” (New York Times). He is praised repeatedly for his poise, elegance, imagination, expressive lyricism and crystalline articulation. He performs regularly in recital and with the finest orchestras across the globe and has received critical acclaim for his recordings.

In solo recital and chamber music, Schwizgebel performs regularly at the major festivals and halls including most recently London’s Wigmore, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Rheingau Festival, Klavierfest Ruhr, Lille Piano Festival and Singapore International Piano Festival and performs chamber music with Benjamin Beilman, Narek Hakhnazaryan, Renaud Capuçon and Alina Ibragimova.

HKUST Arts for Fall 2024 : Image and Sound : Georges and Louis Schwizgebel