Pianist Clémence Hirt was born in Fribourg, Switzerland. She specializes in vocal accompaniment and works as a repetiteur and vocal coach across Switzerland.
She studied at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève with Marc Pantillon. She continued her studies at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, where she obtained both a Master’s degree in Music Pedagogy and a Master’s degree in Specialized Music Performance as part of the chamber music class of Prof. Eckart Heiligers and the Lied class of Prof. Christoph Berner. She currently works with Erna Ronca, and Enrico Cacciere in Zurich.
She was also an active participant in various masterclasses, with notable teachers such as Christian Favre, Finghin Collins, Pascal Sigrist, Heinz Medjimorec, Philippe Tamborini and Klaus Hellwig.
Clémence Hirt takes great pleasure in performing Lied and art song. She works with various singers, like tenor Remy Burnens (Duo Dalùna), mezzo soprano Cassandre Stornetta or soprano Sandrine Droin (Duo Quiproquo). With Droin, she won the 1st prize at the Lied competition from the Gustav Mahler Society Geneva, as well as reaching the final round of the Hugo Wolf International Competition for Lied in Stuttgart, and the semi-final of the Nadia and Lili Boulanger competition in Paris. The two musicians got many important inputs from noted musicians such as Helmut Deutsch, Anne Le Bozec, Christoph Berner, Hans Adolfsen, Ulrich Eisenlohr, Erik Battaglia and Alex Bauni.
Besides her activity as a pianist, Clémence Hirt regularly performs as an organist and harpsichordist, often as a member of the Young Orchestra of Fribourg. She co-founded the operetta company Fri’Bouffes, which encourages young singers to rediscover the mostly unknown repertoire from the interwar period. Additionally, she has also been working as a piano teacher at the music school Knonauer Amt since 2016.
Clémence Hirt is a recipient of the Swiss Richard Wagner Society Stipendium 2019.
Clémence Hirt 