Prizewinners Announced at the Basel Composition Competition for 2025

Chinese composer Qianchen Lu won 60,000 CHF for her work "Nine Odes to the Night"

The fifth edition of the biennial Basel Composition Competition, which was founded in 2017 in honor of the composer Paul Sacher, has recently come to a close. Over two days, works by the twelve finalists were performed by orchestras including the Basel Chamber Orchestra (Tito Ceccherini), the Basel Sinfonietta (Pablo Rus Broseta), and the Basel Symphony Orchestra (Roland Kluttig).

Three prizewinners were selected for a generous pool of prize money. The Chinese composer Qianchen Lu (born in 2000) won First Prize for her work Nine Odes to the Night, and receives 60,000 CHF. Her piece also received the Audience Award and a further 5,000 CHF.

Lu is presently studying composition with Qian Shen-Ying at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her works have received performances from Ensemble Modern, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra.

Second Prize of 25,000 CHF was won by Erqing Wang, also of China, for the work The Gaze of Mnemosyne, while Third Prize of 10,000 CHF went to Ramón Humet of Spain for Bird in Space.

In 2025, the competition jury was chaired by Michael Jarrell (Director of the Paul Sacher Foundation) and comprised Dr Florian Besthorn, three representatives of the participating orchestras, and composers Liza Lim, Augusta Read Thomas, and Andrea L. Scartazzini.

"Qianchen Lu has succeeded in creating an exciting interaction between her musical ideas, the formal design and the temporal dimension of the composition," said jury chair Michael Jarrell of the winning work. "With a personal tonal language, she has created a work that deeply moved the jury with its emotional power. The musical construction and its architectural unity in particular left a lasting impression."