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  You are invited to the concert of Swiss project "eSACHERe" (12 composers of Swiss patron Paul Sacher), held on Monday 9th May 2011, 7pm, at the National Gallery - Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia in Prague (U Milosrdných 17, Praha 1, Czech Republic). Entry is free (see invitation here), but thanks to limited capacity of the concert hall, we recommend to reserve your seats.

  Concert "eSACHERe" will feature Czech Cellist František Brikcius with compositions of 12 world composers (Conrad Beck, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Cristobal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber and Witold Lutoslawski). Event will host conductor Jan Talich and eSACHERe Cello Ensemble.

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  mFiles are partner of project "eSACHERe".

  Swiss conductor and patron of the arts Paul Sacher was born on 28th April 1906 in Basel. In 1925 he started to study conducting with Felix Weingartner and Moser at the Basel Conservatory, and musicology with Karl Nef and Jacques Handschin at the University of Basel.

  In 1926 he founded the Basel Chamber Orchestra (Basler Kammerorchester, BKO), to which the affiliated Basel Chamber Choir was added in 1928. A year later Sacher became a board member and artistic director of the Basel chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). In 1931 he was appointed to the board of directors of the Swiss Association of Musicians and in 1933 he established the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel and became its first director. In 1934 he married Maja Hoffmann-Stehlin, the widow of Emanuel Hoffmann. Through his marriage, Sacher became a member of the board of the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceutical empire.

  In 1936 Sacher commissioned his first work from Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. He became conductor of the newly formed Collegium Musicum Zürich in 1941, and he led it for more than 50 years. In 1941 he became the founder and artistic director of the Collegium Musicum Zurich (CMZ) and in 1946 he became president of the Swiss Association of Musicians. In 1954 Sacher joined the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with both the Conservatory and Musikschule to create the Musikakademie der Stadt Basel. He served as the Musikakademie's first director till 1969. He was appointed honorary president of the Swiss Association of Musicians in 1955; five years later he established a master-class in composition at the Academy of Music and obtained Pierre Boulez as its teacher.

  As a guest conductor, Sacher regularly performed in the most important festivals and music centres in Europe, America, Japan and Australia, including festivals in Glyndebourne, Edinburgh, Lucerne and Aix-en-Provence, cooperating with names such as Pablo Casals, Dinu Lipati and Mstislav Rostropovich.

  In 1973 the Paul Sacher Foundation was founded, which in 1983, purchased the entire Stravinsky archive, followed by collections of Anton Webern, Bruno Maderna, Witold Lutosławski, Gyorgy Ligeti and Pierre Boulez. The Foundation officially opened in 1986 with an exhibition on "Twentieth-Century Music at the Paul Sacher Foundation". The Paul Sacher Foundation currently holds one of the world's major collections of classical and modern music.

  For his 70th birthday, 12 composers (Beck, Berio, Boulez, Britten, Dutilleux, Fortner, Ginastera, Halffter, Henze, Holliger, Huber and Lutosławski) wrote new "eSACHERe" works in his honour.

  A collection of his writings, Reden und Aufsätze, was published in Zürich in 1986. In 1987, after 61/59 years under Sacher's leadership, the final concert of the BKO and the Basel Chamber Chorus was held. In 1996 Sacher retired but still found the time and energy to help set up the Museum Jean Tinguely in Basel.

  As a tireless propagator of 20th-century music, Sacher commissioned over 200 works from many well known composers, including Béla Bartók, Luciano Berio, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Paul Hindemith, Heinz Holliger, Arthur Honegger, Jacques Ibert, Ernst Krenek, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Frank Martin, Bohuslav Martinů, Wolfgang Rihm, Igor Stravinsky and Richard Strauss, often conducting the premières himself.

  In the 1990s he was named the world's third richest man. Paul Sacher died on 26 May 1999 in Basel.

  12 composers - friends (C. Beck, L. Berio, P. Boulez, B. Britten, H. Dutilleux, W. Fortner, A. Ginastera, C. Halffter, H. W. Henze, H. Holliger, K. Huber and W. Lutoslawski) of Swiss composer and maecenas Paul Sacher (1906 - 1999), were asked by Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich on the occasion of Sacher's 70th birthday to write composition for cello solo with use of notes creating his name (eS, A, C, H, E, Re). Compositions were partially presented in Zurich on 2nd May 1976. Whole "eSACHERe" project will be (for the first time in complete performance) performed by Czech Cellist František Brikcius in 2011 in Prague.

  For more about Paul Sacher visit http://www.Brikcius.com , http://www.Paul-Sacher-Stiftung.ch and http://En.Wikipedia.org/Wiki/Paul_Sacher .

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- Místní kultura: Velká hudební výzva - Ludmila Kučerová's Interview with František Brikcius
- Radio Proglas: Brikcius "eSACHERe" Klára Beránková's Interview with František Brikcius about Swiss project eSACHERe

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