Landscapes of tones and sounds: Beat Furrer is turning 65

Beat Furrer, the winner of the 2018 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, will be celebrating his 65th birthday on 6th December 2019. Born in Schaffhausen in Switzerland but with his home for a long time now in Vienna, the composer, conductor, university lecturer and founder of major institutions (the ensemble “Klangforum Wien” among others) is one of the most prominent and influential figures in today’s musical scene. “With Beat Furrer we enter into a landscape of tones and sounds in which any noise of the commonplace is not heard,” as the poet Uwe Kolbe put it in his citation in honour of Beat Furrer’s music. Devoid of the commonplace, Furrer’s musical landscapes create their own fascinating allure – his works are of existential power. The beginning of 2019, an eventful year in his life, saw the celebrated premiere of his latest opera “Violetter Schnee” (Violet Snow) at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, further performances of which are set for January 2020. New and exciting large-scale projects are in the pipeline. Furrer’s works are published since 1996 by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel. (photo: EvS/Manu Theobald)