Honorat Cotteli (1941–2014), Promenade avec Monet

Honorat Cotteli (1941 ‑ 2014)
Promenade avec Monet

Honorat Cotteli spent his early teens in his hometown of Banská Bystrica. At the age of six (1948) he received his first violin lessons. His talent and musicality were soon noticed. At the age of 14 he moved to Brno and began studying violin at the conservatory there, graduating in 1960 in Bratislava. A year before graduating, he became a member of the Bratislava Radio Orchestra and a music editor at Czechoslovak Radio. Soon after, he was transferred to the Slovak Philharmonic. From 1964 he also worked as concertmaster at the State Opera in Banska Bystrica.

In 1967, Cotteli was able to leave Slovakia, which was still communist at the time, and move to Switzerland. He joined the orchestra of the Stadttheater St. Gallen as a violinist and two years later was appointed concertmaster. With his Cotteli Quartet (1st violin Honorat Cotteli, 2nd violin Miloslav Kopecky, viola Oskar Menzel, cello Conrad Schmid) he performed as a chamber musician and as a soloist.

In 1970, Cotteli became a member of the Zurich Opera Orchestra and moved to Spreitbach, not far from Zurich. Under the direction of Räto Tschupp he became a member of the Camerata Zurich. In 1976 he was appointed violin teacher at the Zurich Conservatory (Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK). The focus of his musical work in Switzerland falls after 1970. From 1986 his interest and his musical work shifted more and more to composing his own works.