Beat Furrer was honoured today with the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for “a life in service to music”. The Salzburg Festival congratulates him on winning this high distinction.
Beat Furrer, photo David Furrer
As a Festival artist, the composer and conductor Beat Furrer has appeared repeatedly in Salzburg. In 2008 Markus Hinterhäuser, then the Festival’s Director of Concerts, engaged him to conduct the opera Luci mie traditrici by Salvatore Sciarrino at the Kollegienkirche. That same summer, his composition Fama (An Audio Play in Eight Scenes) was performed.
“Beat Furrer is considered an influential and formative artist personality. His compositions enable us to adopt a different perspective on the familiar, to discover new ways of narrating and listening. Beat Furrer’s entire oeuvre seems inspired by the attempt to stop time in its tracks,” says Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser.
In the summer of 2018, the Salzburg Festival devotes a concert series to the Austrian-Swiss composer.
Beat Furrer in Ljubljana, photo Marijan Zlobec
Concert Series: Time with Furrer
Monday, 30 July, Kollegienkirche
Beat Furrer
Begehren. Musical theatre work based on texts by Cesare Pavese, Günter Eich, Ovid and Vergil (concert performance)
Featuring: Katrien Baerts, Christian Reiner, Cantando Admont, Cordula Bürgi, Klangforum Wien, Peter Böhm, Beat Furrer
Tuesday, 31 July, Kollegienkirche
Beat Furrer
invocation VI for soprano and bass flute
Tomás Luis de Victoria
Missa pro defunctis (Requiem) for six-part choir a cappella
Beat Furrer
intorno al bianco for clarinet and string quartet
Featuring: The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips, Katrien Baerts, Eva Furrer, Bernhard Zachhuber, Klangforum Wien
Thursday, 2 August, Kollegienkirche
Klaus Huber
Des Dichters Pflug. String trio in memoriam Ossip Mandelstam
Beat Furrer
…cold and calm and moving for flute, harp, violin, viola and cello
Gaspra for ensemble
Klaus Huber
L’ombre de notre âge. Contrafact for chamber ensemble
Featuring: oenm. österreichisches ensemble für neue musik, Frank Ollu
Monday, 6 August, Stiftung Mozarteum – Main Auditorium
Beat Furrer
Ira – Arca for bass flute and double bass
Ingeborg Bachmann
Wüstenbuch-Fragmente from the Todesarten Project (reading)
Beat Furrer
Xenos-Szenen from the musical theatre work Wüstenbuch for eight voices and ensemble
Featuring Eva Furrer, Uli Fussenegger, Isabel Karajan, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Klangforum Wien, Beat Furrer (After Press Materials)