Boosey & Hawkes

Unsuk Chin: premiere recording of Violin Concerto

(July 2009)

A new recording of orchestral music by Unsuk Chin has been released by Canadian label Analekta, featuring the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal conducted by Kent Nagano (AN 2 9944). Viviane Hagner is soloist in Chin’s Violin Concerto, the premiere recording of the work that won the world’s most prestigious composition prize, the Grawemeyer Award, in 2004. The disc is completed with the first recording of Rocaná, premiered by the Montréal orchestra and Nagano in 2008.

Listen to an audio clip from the new recording.

Buy the CD from Amazon.

German violinist Viviane Hagner, the Violin Concerto’s dedicatee, gave the premiere in 2002 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin conducted by Nagano. Hagner has performed the concerto 12 times in South Korea, the UK and USA, Germany, Netherlands and Finland. The four movement work is virtuosic both for soloist and orchestra, expanding from the open strings of the violin, through a variety of dreamlike moods and playful episodes. Chin’s whimsical humour and acute ear for instrumental colour are in evidence throughout.

The title of the orchestral work Rocaná is Sanskrit for ‘room of light’, a reference to Chin’s exploration of the relationship between light and sound waves. The composer has described how she “was concerned with the behaviour of beams of light – their distortion, refraction, reflections, and undulations... The overall picture and the overall structure are one entity, one ‘tonal sculpture’. However, one can look at it from various angles, since the inner structures are constantly changing.” Following its Montreal premiere last year Rocaná has been performed in the USA, China, Germany, South Korea and Japan.

Kent Nagano has been a great champion of Unsuk Chin’s music over the past decade. As well as the two works on the disc he has premiered Miroirs des Temps with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and The Hilliard Ensemble, snagS & Snarls with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, and Chin’s opera Alice in Wonderland at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 2007 in a production by Achim Freyer (also available on a Unitel DVD A05016472).

Chin’s music is much in evidence in the coming months. Her new Cello Concerto is premiered at the BBC Proms on 13 August with Alban Gerhardt as soloist and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov. A new concerto for Chinese sheng and orchestra, Šu, is the centre-piece of a Chin feature at the Suntory Summer Music festival in Tokyo on 28 August and is performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel on 9 October. Chin’s Rocaná, as featured on the Analekta recording, receives its UK premiere by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov on 5 November. A second stage production of Alice in Wonderland opens at the Geneva Opera in June 2010.

Unsuk Chin is currently composer in residence with the Seoul Philharmonic and the Essen Philharmonie.

For press review copies of the Analekta disc please contact:
Ginny Cooper (Coda Distribution) on
ginny@codadistribution.co.uk or tel: +44 (0)1206 861332

For further information on Unsuk Chin please visit her website at
www.boosey.com/chin or contact:

David Allenby (Head of Publicity and Marketing) on
david.allenby@boosey.com or tel: +44 (0)20 7054 7253

Antonio De Stefano (Publicity & Press Assistant) on
antonio.destefano@boosey.com or tel: +44 (0)20 7054 7254

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