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Unsuk Chin (born July 14, 1961, Seoul) is a female Korean composer of classical music, based in Berlin, Germany. She was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in 2004 and the Arnold Schönberg Prize in 2005.
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Biography
Unsuk Chin studied composition with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University and won several international prizes in her early 20s. She studied with György Ligeti in Hamburg 1985-1988. Ligeti dismissed Chin's post-serial pieces as unoriginal, which led her to stop composing for a few years. In 1988 Unsuk Chin moved to Berlin, where she worked for years as freelance composer at the Electronic music studio of the Technical University of Berlin, realizing seven works. Her first large orchestral piece, Troerinnen, was being premiered by Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990. In 1991, her breakthrough work Acrostic Wordplay was being premiered by Nieuw Ensemble - since then it has been performed in 15 countries in Europa, Asia and North America. Chin's collaboration with Ensemble Intercontemporain, which has led to several commissions from the latter, started in 1994 with Fantaisie mecanique. Since 1995, Unsuk Chin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes; 1999 began Chin's artistic collaboration with Kent Nagano, who has since then premiered five of Chin's works.
Chin's Violin Concerto, for which she was awarded the Grawemeyer, was being premiered in 2002 by Viviane Hagner as soloist. Since then it has been programmed in Europa, Asia and North America, and performed, among others, by Christian Tetzlaff, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Simon Rattle in 2005.
Unsuk Chin's works have been programmed by conductors such as Kent Nagano, Peter Eötvös, David Robertson and George Benjamin as well as by leading orchestras and ensembles. Commissioners include Kronos Quartet, Radio France, BBC, London Sinfonietta, South Bank Centre, Los Angeles Opera, IRCAM and Bavarian State Opera. Chin's music was highlighted at major music festivals such as Festival Musica in Strasbourg or Settembre Musica in Italy.
2001/2002 Unsuk Chin was appointed composer-in-residence at Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; since 2006 she holds the position of Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra's composer-in-residence and Artistic Director of its Contemporary Music Series.
2007 Chin's first opera Alice in Wonderland was premiered at Bavarian State Opera.
Awards and recognition
- 1984 International Rostrum of Composers for the chamber music work Gestalten
- 1985 First Prize of Gaudeamus Foundation for Spektra
- 1993 First Prize at the Contest for Orchestra Works to Commemorate the Semicentennial for the Tokyo Governement
- 1997 First Prize for Contemporary Piano Music at the Concours International de Piano d'Orléans for the Piano Studies Nos. 2-4
- 1999 First Prize at Concours Internationaux de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges for Xi
- 2004 Grawemeyer Award for Violin Concerto
- 2005 Arnold Schönberg-Prize
Works
Unsuk Chin doesn't regard her music belonging to any specific culture. [1] Chin names Bartók, Stravinsky, Debussy, Webern, Xenakis and Ligeti, [2] among others, as 20th century composers of special importance for her. Chin regards her working experience with Electronic music and her preoccupation with Balinese Gamelan as influental for her work. The colour of her music might perhaps be explained through Chins affinity for Non-European music. However, Chin has also clearly been influenced by musical modernism. In her orchestral work Miroirs des temps Chin has also used compositional concepts of Medieval composers, such as Machaut and Ciconia, by employing and evolving techniques such as musical palindromes and crab canons.
Characteristic for Unsuk Chin's music is a fascination for virtuosity, which is reflected in the difficulty of her works. Virtuosity is an important feature also in Chin's electronic pieces such as Gradus ad infinitum for 8 pianos. In general, Chin doesn't prefer to distinct strongly between electronic and instrumental music. A dominant aspect in Chin's work is playfulness. In some pieces, theatrical actions are employed: e.g. in Allegro ma non troppo for percussion and tape, in Cantatrix Sopranica for voices and ensemble and in Double Bind? for violin and electronics.
The texts of Chin's vocal music are often based on experimental poetry, and occasionally they are self-referential, employing techniques such as acrostics, anagrams und palindromes, all of which are also reflected in the compositional structure. Consequently, Chin has set music to poems by writers such as Inger Christensen, Harry Matthews, Gerhard Rühm or Unica Zürn into music, and the title of Cantatrix Sopranica is derived from a Nonsens treatise by Georges Perec. However, in Kalá Chin has also composed less experimental texts by writers such as Gunnar Ekelöf, Paavo Haavikko and Arthur Rimbaud, and Troerinnen is based on a play by Euripides.
The playful aspects are dominant also in Chins opera Alice in Wonderland, which is based on Lewis Carroll's classic. In choosing the subject, Unsuk Chin was less fascinated by the fairy-tale thematic than by the "twisted logic, which is based on a 'different' physical law."" The opera's libretto was written by David Henry Hwang and the composer. The Munich production, which has been released on DVD by Unitel, was directed by Achim Freyer, and it was selected 'Premiere of the Year' by an international critic poll, which was conducted in 2007 by the German opera magazine "Opernwelt".
Quotations
"My music is a reflection of my dreams. I try to render into music the visions of immense light and of an incredible magnificence of colours that I see in all my dreams, a play of light and colours floating through the room and at the same time forming a fluid sound sculpture. Its beauty is very abstract and remote, but it is for these very qualities that it addresses the emotions and can communicate joy and warmth." (Unsuk Chin) [3]
Critical Reception
"Her aural imagination, her mastery in counterpointing instrumental lines or rival rhythms, and her dexterity in relating the seemingly unalike (whether sounds or compositional practices) must all have been helped by her studies with Ligeti, whose lessons her music has – happily – retained in its clarity, fascination, capricious energy and sheer sonic beauty. But listen, she knows a different kind of darkness, of strength and of memory. Her music makes no parade of national flavour: her preferences for the sounds of plucked or struck strings, for slowly drifting glissandos and for arrays of bells and gongs all carry no specific cultural overtones, and that indeed is one of her strengths. She has left home now. She is moving on." (Paul Griffiths) [4]
"Chin has created her own sonic wonderland with the orchestra. She has always shown a fascination with puzzles and strange, intricate, interlocking structures that give her music a kind of M.C. Escher-like eccentricity." (Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times) [5]
"Her Violin Concerto (…) happens to be the first truly great work of this millennium." (Alan Rich, LA Weekly) [6]
"“Chin’s sound world is seductively cavernous, suggesting not only the magical rabbit hole down which Alice tumbles but also the psychological crevasses beneath the surface of Carroll’s writing... Within a few minutes, the entire orchestra is glittering weirdly: familiar shapes hover at odd angles; age-old harmonies materialize from clouds of timbre and texture; childlike snatches of song appear and disappear, like the body of the Cheshire Cat... The wondrous thing is how effortlessly Chin changes pace, from delicacy to grotesquerie, from cutesiness to dementia. Everything flows organically.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) [7]
"Unsuk Chin’s score, a testimony to commanding musical craft, is sophisticated and has a high entertainment value - equally for those unaccustomed to modern music… Chin’s synaesthetic sense for musical colour and aroma is phenomenal." (Opernwelt) [8]
List of works (selection)
- Troerinnen (1986/1990) for 3 sopranos, women's choir und orchestra, after Euripides
- Gradus ad Infinitum for 8 pianos (1989/1990) for tape
- Akrostichon-Wortspiel (1991/93) for soprano and ensemble
- Fantaisie mécanique (1994/1997) für trumpet, trombone, two percussions and piano
- Piano Studies (1995-)
- ParaMetaString (1995) for string quartet and electronics
- Piano Concerto (1996-97)
- Xi (1998) for ensemble and electronics
- Miroirs des temps (1999/2000) for 4 singers and orchestra
- Kalá (2000-01) for soprano, bass, mixed choir and orchestra
- Violin concerto (2001)
- Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble (2002)
- snagS&Snarls for soprano and orchestra (2004)
- Cantatrix Sopranica für two sopranos, countertenor and ensemble (2005)
- Double Bind? for violin and live electronics (2006-7)
- Alice in Wonderland (Opera; 2004-2007)
- Rocaná for orchestra (2008)
Recordings
- Unsuk Chin: Akrostichon – Wortspiel. Ensemble Intercontemporain. CD. Deutsche Grammophon, 2005
- Unsuk Chin: Alice in Wonderland. Bayerische Staatsoper. DVD. Unitel, 2008
- Allegro ma non troppo. In: Fifty Years Studio TU Berlin. EMF Media, DVD 054, 2008
Notes
External links
- Boosey&Hawkes: Unsuk Chin Website of the composer
- Paul Griffiths: An introduction to the music of Unsuk Chin
- Hanno Ehrler: Ordnung, Chaos und Computer – Die Komponistin Unsuk Chin
- Arnold Whittall: Unsuk Chin in focus: Meditations & mechanics
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