BBC Singers 2026-27 SPRACHLOS | Azrieli Music Prizes in Concert

48 singers, four double basses, an array of percussion and some of the most compelling voices in contemporary music: at Basel’s Martinskirche, the BBC Singers, Basler Madrigalisten and Klangforum Wien come together for two extraordinary large-scale choir concerts – an evening of monumental sound worlds, lost languages, and the world premiere of a new work by Georg Friedrich Haas, alongside four works honoured with the Azrieli Music Prize (AMP), one of the world’s most prestigious composition competitions, created by Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation.​
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The first concert opens with Yair Klartag’s The Parable of the Palace, conducted by Benjamin Goodson. Written for large vocal and instrumental forces, the work draws on a medieval parable in its original Judeo-Arabic – a language once spoken by Jewish communities across the Arab world and now largely lost. Klartag takes this vanished language and the parable itself as the starting point for an intense musical exploration of knowledge and faith, navigating the fine line between rationality and irrationality.

This is followed by a world premiere from Georg Friedrich Haas: SPRACHLOS, a new a cappella work commissioned by Interfinity and performed by the Basler Madrigalisten under Raphael Immoos. The work dispenses with words altogether, using only phonemes. Towards the end, the choir quite literally dissolves: one by one, the singers leave the church while continuing to sing, moving through the audience as their voices grow ever more distant – until only silence remains.

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Sounds.