Whether it's rich, beautiful singing or brittle polyphony - both sound absolutely convincing from the mouth of vocal artist Sylvia Nopper. She sings baroque oratorios just as well and with just as much pleasure as she makes freshly printed noise scores resound with her excellent creative talent. Her creative curiosity and joy of discovery make her the ideal interpreter of contemporary music. It is therefore not surprising that most of the more than 150 works she has premièred, from solo to opera, were also written for her.
New music has regularly taken her to festivals in South and North America, Asia, Oceania and throughout Europe. She has performed with conductors such as Heinz Holliger, Jürg Wyttenbach and Pierre Boulez, with the Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, Intercontemporaine Paris, Klangforum Wien, Phoenix Basel, Contrechamps Genève, the Swiss Chamber Soloists and with many renowned orchestras and soloists.
Sylvia Nopper devotes herself to her second great love, chamber music, with the same dedication. With an enormous wealth of tonal colours and dynamic possibilities, she moves effortlessly through the most diverse styles of the last 500 years. She specialises in songs and chamber music of the 19th and 20th centuries.
CD recordings on ECM, NEOS or Musiques Suisses as well as numerous radio recordings document the enthusiasm with which the singer repeatedly rises to the challenge of crossing supposed boundaries and penetrating unknown musical realms, opening up new perspectives and making the impossible possible.
The soprano has been teaching singing and contemporary chamber music as a lecturer at the FHNW School of Music, Classical Music and the Basel School of Music since 2012. In doing so, she embarks on a curious, exploratory search for sounds that flow through body and soul in order to understand herself as a living instrument with which one learns to communicate musically.