The finalists of the Basel Composition Competition 2025 have been announced: the jury, chaired by Swiss composer Michael Jarrell, has made its selection of twelve compositions.
From 30 January to 2 February 2025, the three Basel orchestras — Basel Chamber Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra, and Basel Sinfonietta — will premiere these works and the jury will then judge them. In the final on 2 February 2025, the jury will award prizes to the best works. The prize money, including an audience prize to be awarded for the first time in 2025, amounts to CHF 100,000 and will be divided among three to four winners. The BCC takes place every two years. In previous years, Víctor Ibarra (2017), Benjamin Scheuer (2019), Yiqing Zhu (2021) and Leonardo Silva (2023) received the 1st prize.
Eight works for symphony orchestra and four for chamber orchestra were selected from the 255 scores submitted. Composers from 50 countries aged between 15 and 91 once again took part. Entries from China, Germany, Italy, Spain and the USA together made up half of the participants. The composers were free to submit works for symphony or chamber orchestra that have not yet been performed and have not yet been awarded a prize.
The compositions were selected by a high-calibre jury consisting of the internationally renowned composers Liza Lim, Augusta Read Thomas, Andrea L. Scartazzini, the director of the Paul Sacher Foundation, Dr Florian Besthorn, and three representatives of the participating orchestras, in addition to the chairman Michael Jarrell.
Nominations:
- Ramón Humet *1968 (Spain) – Bird in Space
- Giorgio Francesco Dalla Villa *1986 (Italy) – Sinfonietta
- Jona Kümper *1973 (Germany) – punctum contra punctum
- Aurés Moussong *1984 (Mexico/Hungary) – Macabre Carnival
- Said Ruiz Salazar *1988 (Spain) – Negra espalda del tiempo
- René Kuwan *1983 (Germany) – Rien ne va plus
- Qianchen Lu *2000 (China) – Nine Odes to The Night
- Guang Shi Quan *1971 (China) – Seven Days Fairy Tale
- Robert Kolář *1982 (Slovakia) – Babylonian Gardens III
- Erqing Wang *1998 (China) – The Gaze of Mnemosyne
- David Hernández-Ramos *1975 (Mexico) – De la nit i el mar
- Dimitris Maronidis *1980 (United Kingdom) – Fenêtre sur le Chaos
In 2017–18 years after his death – Paul Sacher’s spirit will be revived once again as the most compelling works of the 21st century are brought to Basel for the first edition of BCC. No person is more representative of the Basel musical scene than Paul Sacher (1906-1999).
He devoted himself tirelessly to the music of his century in his various roles as conductor, as commissioner of new works and as sponsor and member of numerous guilds and institutions. Amongst the works commissioned by Paul Sacher are Béla Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”, Bohuslav Martinů’s “Toccata e due Canzoni”, Igor Stravinsky’s “Concerto en ré” as well as Arthur Honegger’s Fourth Symphony.
In 1973, Sacher founded the Paul Sacher Foundation which gained international reputation as a leading research institution after acquiring the estate of Igor Stravinsky and collections from Anton Webern and Bruno Maderna.
More informations here.