Conrad Beck

Beck's stay in Paris between 1924 and 1933 proved crucial to his artistic development, where he studied with Jacques Ibert and also made contact with Arthur Honegger, Nadia Boulanger, and Albert Roussel.

During a period of over 50 years, Sacher commissioned his works and conducted their premieres with the chamber orchestra Basler Kammerorchester and the Collegium Musicum Zürich.

On the occasion of Paul Sacher's 70th birthday, Beck was asked, together with 11 composer friends (Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber and Witold Lutosławski), by Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich to write a composition for cello which used the notes creating Sacher's name: eS, A, C, H, E, Re (E♭, A, C, B, E, D).

Beck's music is characterized by a large measure of seriousness, tenacity, and depth of expression, but also by transparency and a sense of harmonic proportion.

He composed a number of orchestral and choral works in the style of Arthur Honegger, the best known of which was Der Tod zu Basel, a piece for choir, soloists, speaker, and orchestra.

In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he studied instrumentation privately with Jacques Ibert, along with further instruction from Basel composer Ernst Levy.

The early encouragement he received and the lifelong friendships dating back to his time in Paris would play an important role in his life.

Beck relocated to Basel in 1933 at the suggestion of the conductor and music patron Paul Sacher, to whom he had introduced his friend Bohuslav Martinů.

For five decades, Paul Sacher championed Beck, commissioning and conducting premieres of his works with the Basler Kammerorchester and the Collegium Musicum Zürich.

Beck proposed and arranged numerous original and first performances in the Basel local branch of the IGNM, including among others the première of the last work by Albert Roussel, the string trio Op.

Based on music created during the 1920s in Paris by Stravinsky, Honegger, Roussel, Milhaud and other French composers, Beck developed an independent, predominantly lyrical and deeply expressive style.