Beat Furrer reçoit sa première formation musicale au piano à l'école de musique de Shaffhausen. Après s'être installé à Vienne en 1975, il étudie la direction d'orchestre avec Otmar Suitner et la composition auprès de Roman Haubenstock Ramati à la Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. En 1985, il fonde le Klangforum Wien, qu'il dirige jusqu'en 1992 et auquel il est toujours associé en tant que chef d'orchestre.
L'opéra d'État de Vienne, lui commande son premier opéra Die Blinden en 1989. Narcisse est créée en 1994 dans le cadre du festival «Steirischer herbst» à l'opéra de Graz. En 1996, il est compositeur en résidence au Festival de Lucerne. Son œuvre de théâtre musical Begehren est créée à Graz en 2001, l'opéra Invocation à Zurich en 2003 et la pièce de théâtre sonore Fama à Donaueschingen en 2005. À l'automne 1991, Furrer devient professeur de composition à la Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst à Graz. Il est professeur invité en composition à la Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst de Francfort entre 2006 et 2009.
En 2004, il reçoit le prix de musique de la ville de Vienne et, en 2005, devient membre de l'Académie des arts de Berlin. En 2006, il reçoit le Lion d'or à la Biennale de Venise pour son oeuvre Fama et, en 2014, le Grand Prix d'État autrichien. En 2010, son théâtre musical Wüstenbuch est créé au théâtre de Bâle et en 2015, son opéra La bianca notte / La nuit ensoleillée est créé à l'opéra national de Hambourg.
Beat Furrer reçoit le prix Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis 2018. En janvier 2019, son dernier opéra Violetter Schnee (Violet Snow) est créé à l'opéra d'État de Berlin, Unter den Linden.
NOTICE
(for piano and ensemble)
"Concerto for piano and ensemble" Beat Furrer is the extension and the culmination of his compositional study of the sounds of the piano, its phenomena, its resonances, its harmonic spectra, the use of pedals, previously explored in the works for solo piano like Phasma (2002) or DreiKlavierstücke (2004) and in Nuun for two pianos and ensemble (1995/1996). "My main goal was", says Beat Furrer, "to give the piano a resonance throughout the piece and maintain the plasticity of its sounds. These sounds are still the center of gravity of the piece while the orchestra plays the role of amplifier, giving an extended piano sound". Concerto for piano and ensemble sound spatialization using the piano as a compositional technique. The large ensemble is the echo chamber of the solo instrument, in which the different sounds and possibilities of articulation of the piano are amplified: from metal, shattering into crystal. Particular emphasis is given to the sounds and trembling tones of the low notes of the strings: the "non-tempered in the temperate" here is the starting point for the harmonic development. (...) Muted notes of the low keys of the solo piano acquire a resonance by the instruments of the orchestra and the sounds of Piccolo's second piano: they flow so to speak, from the solo instrument into the acoustic environmental space. Of these vibrations, Beat Furrer develops a rapid movement of sextuplets, which result in the complete device ever more dazzling cascades of piano solo. The early harmonic structures are transformed into rhythmic structures.
Le martellato (hammered) sets the sextuplets that turn more and more the whole expression of the event.
The result is a figure carried deeper into the suction of the motor movement. The increase corresponds to a dynamic expansion of the sound space, up to the high notes of the piano, accordion and trumpet, combined with a sound transformation. "The process leading to more and more metallic sound, high pitched, like a gong. It is interrupted by two lines gradually ascending, tones and resonances leading to the most acute that can be comparable to the sound of a woodblock. Thus began a process of modulation to the crystalline sounds. Glass bottles begin a descending line, the piano is also used. During these repeated periods in the high note regions, the martellato indicates a turning point to another sound, isolated, brutal." (...)
Marie-Louise Maintz
(translated from German by Aude Grandveau)
Nero su nero (black on black) speaks of gradations of darkness, of the nuancing of light, the application of colour without colour, the stratification of pigments, of intensification. A multiple fanned-out overlapping of voices, whose particles rest on quite elementary forms of movement is the colour material. In the composition two great sections composed of heterogeneous elements frame a slow central part which emerges as a great inexorable development leading to a bright, loud, frenetic blaze. A continuous intensification is pared from almost imperceptible alterations, which takes the action to a tremendous dramatic high point.
The structural model, says Beat Furrer, consists of a principle of assembly developed to the highest complexity and yet simplicity: “It is about the creation of melody from the interpolation of heterogeneous elements. In the first part these are two layers; a great colourfulness is created of these two structures interpolated into each other. In the central part there is just one layer. The very long central section is concerned with achieving a continuous alteration of colour instrumentally as well as harmonically – from darkness to light. Within this development there is nevertheless still a structural polyphony of various kinds of movement in the strings, at different speeds with the ascending and descending lines. The sequencing models are based on chromatic and other intervallic combinations which pass by superimposed in the tonal landscape, so that a kind of unending movement of wandering overtones is produced. In the last part the descending chromaticism in the strings is continued, as overtones of a chromatic line.”
Marie Luise Maintz