Unsuk Chin: premieres on three continents

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(August 2009)

Unsuk Chin’s international diary includes premieres in the UK, Japan, the USA, Germany and the Netherlands over the coming months, with major features on her music in Tokyo and Essen.

Unsuk Chin’s new Cello Concerto is premiered at the BBC Proms on 13 August, launching a period of intense activity for her music over the coming months. The new work was commissioned by the BBC and composed for young German cellist Alban Gerhardt. The premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London features the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov. The concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, telecast on BBC4 TV, and can be heard live on the Radio3 iPlayer and for the following week via the iPlayer’s Listen Again service.

Read an interview with Unsuk Chin about her new concertos.

Unsuk Chin is a featured composer at this year’s Suntory Summer Festival in Tokyo which celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Suntory Music Foundation. A pair of concerts on 24 and 28 August feature seven of Chin’s works culminating in the world premiere of Šu, a new concerto for Chinese sheng and orchestra. The work was commissioned by Suntory Hall International Programme, ZaterdagMatinée, the LA Philharmonic and the Essen Philharmonie, and was composed for sheng virtuoso Wu Wei who is soloist in all the scheduled performances. The world premiere on 28 August features the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazuyoshi Akiyama.

Following the Tokyo premiere, Šu, is programmed within the inaugural events for Gustavo Dudamel’s tenure as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with the US premiere scheduled at Walt Disney Concert Hall on 9 October. The concerto travels to Amsterdam on 13 March 2010 and Essen on 4 June 2010.

Unsuk Chin describes how she came to composer for the sheng: “I’ve been fascinated by the instrument for many decades, but my interest in writing a concerto was sparked when I heard Wu Wei for the first time in Berlin, as he introduced me to the great virtuosic possibilities and multi-faceted nature of this instrument… Unlike its Korean and Japanese counterparts, the Chinese sheng – which is more than 4000 years old – has been developed into a modernised and highly versatile instrument. Because of the key mechanisms it has the potential for chromaticism, microtones, chords, polyphony, clusters… At times, it can sound like electroacoustic music and the instrument is capable of the eeriest of sounds and of explosive power.”

A third new work is currently being composed for the Ensemble Modern for premiere in Chin’s home city of Berlin on 9 October conducted by Johannes Kalitzke. A further performance is scheduled on 9 April as part of a major survey of Chin’s works at the Essen Philharmonie where she is composer in residence throughout the 2009/10 season. The residency features seven works by Chin including the German premiere of Šu on 4 June 2010, with Myung-Whun Chung conducting the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom Chin is also composer in residence.

Unsuk Chin’s Grawemeyer Award-winning Violin Concerto has just been released on a new CD by Analekta (AN 2 9944), featuring its dedicatee Viviane Hagner with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal conducted by Kent Nagano. A review of the CD in The Times desribed the concerto as “a work that sings and soars with a visionary beauty rare in contemporary music. Against a vague, swirling background, the violinist enters on open strings. She’s tuning up for an incredible journey through Chin’s light, fantastic world, shaped as much by Far Eastern music cultures as the structures of Western tradition."

Listen to an audio clip of the Violin Concerto from the new CD.

The coupling on the disc is Chin’s recent orchestral work Rocaná, which receives its UK premiere by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov on 5 November, and reaches Berlin on 8 June 2010 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester conducted by Kent Nagano.

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