In 2018 Unsuk Chin Became the Fourth Re

Šu, for Sheng and Orchestra Unsuk Chin n 2018 Unsuk Chin became the fourth re- that have come her way include the Arnold Icipient of The Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for Schoenberg Prize in Vienna, the Heidelberger New Music at the New York Philharmonic, Künstlerinnenpreis, the British Composer following in the steps of previous awardees Award, the Music Composition Prize of the Henri Dutilleux, Per Nørgård, and Louis Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco, the Wi- Andriessen. The prize includes the com- huri Sibelius Prize, the Hamburg Bach Prize, mission of a new symphonic work for a fu- and, in South Korea, awards of the Kyung- ture season, but this year the Orchestra has Ahm and the Daewon Foundations, and programmed her Šu (pronounced “shu”), a the Ho-Am Prize. She served as composer- single-movement concerto for sheng and in-residence with the Seoul Philharmonic orchestra, the fourth of her compositions it Orchestra, for which she established and has presented. oversaw a contemporary music series. She Following study at Seoul National Univer- has also served as composer-in-residence for sity in her native South Korea, Chin traveled the Philharmonie in Essen, Germany, and to Hamburg, where from 1985 to 1988 she this season she is composer-in-residence was a pupil of György Ligeti. Settling in Ber- with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra lin, she realized a sequence of compositions in Hamburg. at the Electronic Music Studio of the Tech- Chin’s music occasionally employs sounds nical University of Berlin. By the early 1990s associated with Asia, but her music is really her acoustic works, for orchestra or various part of the international avant-garde; it is per- ensembles, began to attract attention. Her breakthrough was Acrostic-Wordplay, premiered by the Nieuw Ensemble in 1991 and In Short since performed in some 20 countries in Eu- Born: July 14, 1961, in Seoul, South Korea rope, the Americas, and Asia. In 1992 she en- tered into an artistic collaboration with the Resides: in Berlin, Germany Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris. Work composed: 2009, on commission Some of Chin's compositions involve from Suntory Limited (for the Suntory Hall a combination of acoustic and electronic International Program for Music Composi- sounds. Others are strictly for acoustical tion); ZaterdagMatinee; Los Angeles Philhar- forces both instrumental and vocal. Her op- monic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, music era Alice in Wonderland, premiered in 2007 director; and Philharmonie Essen; inscribed by the Bavarian Staatsoper in Munich, and “Written for Wu Wei; dedicated to Jungho Choe and Sukhi Kang, on the occasion of their widely hailed by critics, was disseminated 75th birthdays” through a commercial DVD, and has since been staged in Geneva, Bielefeld, Germany, World premiere: August 28, 2009, at Suntory and St. Louis. Hall in Tokyo, Japan, by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, conductor, Her year as composer-in-residence with Wu Wei, soloist the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in 2001–02 led to the composition of her Vio- New York Philharmonic premiere: these lin Concerto, for which she was awarded the performances Grawemeyer Award in 2004. Other honors Estimated duration: ca. 21 minutes OCTOBER 2019 | 27 sonal rather than national, and decidedly not abstract and remote, but it is for these very nationalistic. In fact, Šu is her first concerto qualities that it addresses the emotions to feature a non-Western instrument; her and can communicate joy and warmth. other concertos are for cello, clarinet, piano, and violin, plus a Double Concerto for Instrumentation: three flutes (one dou- Piano, Percussion, and Ensemble. The ti- bling piccolo, one doubling piccolo and tle of Šu derives from the symbol for air in alto flute), two oboes and English horn, Egyptian mythology. Chin devises striking three clarinets (one doubling E-flat clar- effects of instrumental timbre, often making inet and one doubling bass clarinet), two subtle use of a large number of percussion bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, instruments; here they include binzasara four trumpets, three trombones, two tu- (a Japanese wooden rattle constructed of bas, timpani, harp, tubular bells, crotales, small wooden tiles laced on a string), do- snare drums, four bongos, three congas, bači (a Japanese cup-shaped bell), and tambourines, silk paper, four harmonicas, Javanese gongs. vibraphone, cowbells, binzasara, bamboo Glowing or shimmering timbral combina- chime, crotales, cymbals, finger cymbal, tions sometimes flicker through Chin’s lyri- tam-tams, two timbales, three tom-toms, cal soundscapes. She has written: tenor drum, maracas, guiro, frame drum, xylophone, triangles, sandpaper, flexatone, My music is a reflection of my dreams. I water gong, thunder sheet, mark tree, try to render into music the visions of im- three Javanese gongs, orchestra bells (with mense light and of an incredible magnifi- pedal), dobači, bass drum, twig brush, log cence of colors that I see in all my dreams, drum, slit drum, glass wind chime, harp, a play of light and colors floating through and strings (including four violins and two the room and at the same time forming a violas positioned on the balcony), in addi- fluid sound sculpture. Its beauty is very tion to the solo sheng. Listen for . the Sheng The name sheng first appeared in a written source in about the 7th century BCE, although references to differently identified mouth organs date from five to seven centuries earlier. Traditionally an accompanying instrument, the modern sheng has been thrust to international prominence in new works thanks in large part to the efforts of soloist Wu Wei. Versions of the instrument were also embraced in Japan (as the shō), Laos (as the khene or khaen), and Korea (as the saenghwang). Unsuk Chin first encountered the instrument in its Korean form, when she heard it being played on a mountain from afar. She reports that she associated the experience with “yearning for a distant sound” — and she incorpo- rated the idea of distance into Šu, partly by placing a group of violins and violas apart from the orchestra for the final pages. A 19th-century sheng, from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art 28 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC.

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