Ursuk Chin

The music of Unsuk Chin is a magical realm in which new perspectives are constantly unfolding. Labyrinths of novel sounds and complex structures can be followed by moments of transcendental beauty. For us as an orchestra, this world poses certain challenges — indeed, it is part of Unsuk Chin’s style to test the limits of performing techniques. Or, to put it another way, she lets us show off our strengths. Her inventiveness exemplifies the inexhaustible vitality of today’s music. These qualities have made Unsuk Chin one of few composers with whom we’ve collaborated so frequently and productively.

Composer Unsuk Chin has a special relationship with Canada; long before she began wowing them at IRCAM and began to take Europe by storm, Chin's music had been heard in Canada as part of the ISCM Music Days festival, as early as 1984. Kent Nagano, a conductor with whom Chin often works, was named to the post of music director to the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal in 2006, prompting her return to Canada and ultimately to this Analekta recording, Unsuk Chin: Rocaná/Violin Concerto.

Unsuk Chin - 3 Concertos - Kim, Gerhardt, Wei, Chung, Seoul Philharmonic (2014) {Deutsche Grammophon}
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© 2014 Deutsche Grammophon / Universal / SPO | 0289 481 0971 | World Premiere Recordings
Classical / Concerto

This release represents something of a milestone: a performance of major, public Korean compositions by mostly Korean musicians, recorded for a large Western label and presumably marketed at least as much to Westerners as to Koreans. Composer Unsuk Chin was a student of György Ligeti, but her style resembles his only in her general orientation toward layered textures and rhythmic emphasis. She writes music in which the relationships between blocks of sound shift over the course of a composition, and although her harmonic world is atonal, her writing is not difficult to follow. The concerto form allows an ideal introduction to what she does, and the three works here are attractive examples (she has written several others). Start with the concluding Su, for sheng & orchestra, from 2009.