The next festival edition will take place from 7 February to 7 March 2026. The Berner Klaviertrio will open the festival at the Zentrum Paul Klee. We look forward to welcoming you!

From 7 February to 7 March 2026, Bern will host the seventh edition of the Piano Trio Fest – the only festival worldwide dedicated exclusively to the piano trio! Over the past years, the festival has established itself not only in Switzerland but also internationally, and in 2026 it once again presents itself as a vibrant laboratory for new formats, unexpected encounters, and sonic experiments.

In addition to classical chamber music highlights, audiences can look forward to cross-genre concert concepts that weave jazz, rock, literature, and culinary experiences into the festival’s framework. Outstanding soloists such as Daniel Behle and the Oliver Schnyder Trio meet emerging young talents and adventurous ensembles.

Two of the participating groups will be selected in collaboration with the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) and the ORPHEUS Competition through independent selection processes. Another ensemble will be chosen via an open call for a spin-off concert at the Haus zum Wilden Mann in Wynigen. Across all three selection processes, gender balance plays a guiding role, with ensembles including female musicians given priority consideration.

In 2026, special emphasis will be placed on the promotion of contemporary composition. HKB graduate Aline Sarah Müller has been commissioned to write a new work for prepared piano and three musicians, which will receive its world premiere during the festival. The program also celebrates the 100th anniversaryof Frank Martin’s Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises.

Another highlight will be the staged world premiere of a monologue for actor and piano trio by Marco Müller, presented in the newly opened spaces of the Bernapark. The final concert features a masterwork in a new sonic guise: Schubert’s Winterreise, arranged by Daniel Behle for voice and piano trio, performed by the award-winning Oliver Schnyder Trio and Daniel Behle.

The Piano Trio Fest 2026 stands entirely for creative openness and artistic encounter, uniting familiar voices with new perspectives on the genre of chamber music.

Following the previous commission to Swiss composer and jurist Rico Gubler, the festival now supports the young composer and recent HKB alumna Aline Sarah Müller, who is creating a conceptual work for current HKB students. Her commissioned piece will receive its world premiere at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern in 2025, performed by the Berner Klaviertrio.

Aline Sarah Müller describes her new work as follows:

“The new piece is a rhythmically driven work for piano and three musicians, two of whom perform primarily inside the piano – plucking, striking, and damping the strings to intervene directly in the sound body and create a pulsating texture. The third performer, the pianist, interacts rhythmically and sonically with this fabric, which emerges from the prepared and expanded sound spectrum of the instrument. The piano thus functions not only as a melodic and harmonic source but also as a percussive center. Through precisely structured rhythmic processes, a dialogical interplay develops in which the roles are constantly shifting. The extreme physical proximity of the musicians at the same instrument creates an intense chamber-musical atmosphere based on bodily presence and close musical interaction.”