Korean composer Unsuk Chin has been an exciting new talent for a remarkably long time — more than three decades in Europe now. Longtime Bay Area residents may remember she was featured prominently by Berkeley Symphony, then under the direction of Kent Nagano, at the beginning of the century.
Nagano continued to champion Chin when he served as artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin from 2000 to 2006. (The composer has resided in Berlin since 1988.) As he’s gone on to lead orchestras in Europe (he’s currently general music director of the Hamburg State Opera), Nagano’s dedication to contemporary composers — Chin, Arvo Pärt, Naomi Sekiya, José Evangelista, Pascal Dusapin, Elliott Carter, George Benjamin, and many others — has remained a characteristic of his career.
Now, one of Chin’s new works, co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, is having its U.S. premiere at Davies Symphony Hall May 16–18, part of a program that also includes Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 (with soloist Joshua Bell), Kevin Puts’s Earth, and Claude Debussy’s La mer.
The conductor is Ryan Bancroft, making his SF Symphony debut. The young Californian is chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
The reason to delay naming Chin’s work becomes obvious when the reader finally encounters it: Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’ (Alaraph, ritual of the heartbeat).
Alaraph is the name of one of the so-called heartbeat stars. As Chin explains, these are “pulsating variable binary star systems in eccentric orbits with vibrations caused by tidal forces. … [The] light curves is similar to what a heartbeat looks like through an electrocardiogram when its brightness is mapped over time.”
Besides the EKG image, Chin says the work also includes “certain aspects of Korean traditional music, both the ‘static’ courtly ritual music and the lively folk music. I didn’t use these in the form of quotations but alluded to them distantly in the work’s gestures and structure in a compressed and highly stylized manner.
“The percussion section plays a central role. In contrast to my other orchestral works, I dispense entirely with all melodic percussion, such as the vibraphone or glockenspiel. Instead, the properties of rhythmic percussion instruments are being used to the utmost. Consequently, the work displays considerable energy and physicality.”
Chin’s interest in science and cosmology has its roots in her childhood, as she explained in an interview with Thea Derks:
“The initial impetus dates from when, as a child, I began to wonder about dreams, an encounter with another world where very different laws of physics prevail. Dreams, like music, are phenomena that flow through time but at the same time are frozen, like a sculpture, in a small moment of timelessness.”
Thinking that “what we perceive in our daily lives is only a fraction of reality,” Chin began exploring cosmology and physics, subjects repeating in many of her compositions, like Alaraph.
“We are excited to bring Unsuk Chin’s Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’ to the San Francisco Symphony,” Chief Artistic Officer Phillippa Cole told SF Classical Voice. “The orchestra gave excellent performances of two of Unsuk’s works in 2021 [Graffiti and Subito con Forza], and we were thrilled to co-commission this piece and have another opportunity to engage with her work.
“Unsuk’s music has so much energy and creativity, and Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’ in particular features an enormous percussion section that is central to the piece. I’m excited to see Ryan Bancroft work with the orchestra for these performances as well. He’s very much at home with contemporary works … so I’m looking forward to seeing him bring Unsuk’s incredible work to life with our musicians.”
