Rainer Held
grew up in the Canton of the Grisons in Switzerland. After training to become a primary school teacher, he studied at the University of Zurich (musicology) and at the Lucerne School of Music at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts).

He completed his studies in orchestra-conducting, choir-conducting, solo singing and music education. Rainer Held received important impulses during the education by Marcello Viotti and Herbert Blomstedt. Then he studied conducting further, attending masterclasses by Harri Rodmann in Basel, Michael Dittrich in Budapest and others. He also made study visits to Salzburg in Austria and Tokyo in Japan.

Rainer Held was particularly influenced by the Russian conductor Gennady Provatorov (1929-2010), one of the great Russian personalities on the conducting scene of the former Soviet Union and later in Belarus (he was a student of Aleksandr Gauk in Moscow, a fellow student of Mravinsky and Svetlanov and in Moscow in 1962 he conducted the world première and first recording of the opera Katerina Izmailova by Dmitri Shostakovich).

From 2003 to 2010 Rainer Held was First Permanent Guest Conductor at the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Minsk in Belarus. This orchestra of the National State Tele-Radiocompany of the Republic of Belarus, over 100 musicians, is one of the leading ensembles in the Belarusian capital.

Since 2008, he has been attached to the State Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra of Novosibirsk as a permanent guest conductor. The legendary string sound of this orchestra is a direct result of the long tradition of exceptional string tuition at the Novosibirsk State Conservatory. With this orchestra he realised many concerts, tours and recordings in Russia, Germany and Switzerland.

Since 1994 until 2015, Rainer Held has conducted the Aarau Chamber Choir in Switzerland. Together with this and other choirs, he regularly performs large-scale works of the choral and orchestral repertoire. Actually he is the artistic leader of the large rhaeto-romanic ‘Chor viril Sursés’ in Savognin and co-conductor of the Choir of PH Lucerne.