Beat Furrer

The Swiss composer and conductor Beat Furrer initially trained as a pianist in his home city of Schaffhausen and went on to study conducting with Otmar Suitner and composition with Roman Haubenstock-Ramati at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In 1985 he founded Klangforum Wien, which he directed until 1992 and with which he has ever since been a conductor.

As a composer, he has been developing a wide-ranging repertory since the 1980s, reaching from solo pieces to chamber music to ensemble works for choir and orchestra and operas. The Vienna State Opera commissioned him in 1989 to write his first opera Die Blinden, and his second opera Narcissus was given its world premiere by the Graz Opera in 1994 as part of the steirischer herbst. In 1996 he was composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival, in 2001 his music theatre piece Begehren received its world premiere (concert performance) in Graz, in 2003 his opera Invocation was premiered in Zurich and in 2005 his award-winning sound theatre work FAMA received its premiere in Donaueschingen. There followed the world premieres of the music theatre piece Wüstenbuch at Theater Basel in 2010, the opera la bianca notte based on texts by Dino Campana at the Hamburg State Opera in 2015 and the opera Violetter Schnee, with a libretto by Händl Klaus, at the Berlin State Opera in 2019.

In August 2024 Beat Furrer will present his new work for orchestra at the Lucerne Festival, as the recipient of the Roche Commission. The world premiere of his opera Das große Feuer (to a text by Thomas Stangl after Sara Gallardo’s novel Eisejuaz) is scheduled to take place at the Zurich Opera House in 2025.

Beat Furrer was professor of composition at the University of the Arts in Graz from 1991 to 2023. Towards the end of the 1990s in Graz he and Ernst Kovacic founded impuls, the International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music. From 2006 to 2009 he held a guest professorship in composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. Since 2005 he has been a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin, and he was also a member of the board of the New Music Network launched by the German Federal Cultural Foundation in 2006.

Beat Furrer’s artistic work has been honoured with numerous awards, such as the Music Prize of the City of Vienna in 2004, the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale for FAMA in 2006, the Grand Austrian State Prize in 2014 and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2018.