Lucerne Festival Announces Recipients of Roche Young Commissions Award

Composers Jakob Raab and Guillem Palomar will each write a new work for the 2025 edition of the festival

The Roche Young Commissions Award, which is sponsored by Roche Pharmaceuticals, provides scope for two young composers to write a new orchestral work — which will be premiered by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) at the 2025 edition of the festival.

Composers Jakob Raab and Guillem Palomar are the recipients of this year's award. The pair were selected for the award by Wolfgang Rihm (the Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy) and composer Dieter Ammann. During the summer of 2024, they will attend a workshop with Rihm and Ammann as part of the Academy — at which point they will receive feedback on their drafts, and will hear sections rehearsed by the Academy orchestra.

Originally hailing from Barcelona, Guillem Palomar studied composition with Jörg Widmann, electroacoustics with Gilbert Nouno, and conducting with Michael Wendeberg. His works have been performed by ensembles including Ensemble Modern, the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, and the Boulez Ensemble.

In addition, Palomar has attended masterclasses with some of our most prominent living composers, including Péter Eötvös, George Benjamin, Hans Abrahamsen, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Rebecca Saunders.

German composer Jakob Raab studied with Theo Brandmüller, Arnulf Herrmann, and Wolfgang Rihm at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, where he also studied piano and music theory. In 2022 he was afforded a residency scholarship from the Beethoven House in Bonn, and his composition vice was premiered by the Saarland Radio Orchestra as a result. Raab's works have also been performed at the International Ensemble Modern Academy.