Unsuk Chin

Can you really compose better? As a contemporary composer in the classical field? More fascinating? More clear, yet complex? More curious, but so the music is still easy to listen to? Composer Unsuk Chin has cracked the code for how to win the respect of the avant-garde at the same time and get the big assignments from the European and American top orchestras that have to sell tickets.

When she wrote an opera a few years ago, it was about Alice from ‘Alice in Wonderland’, and that was smart. Thus, Unsuk Chin was able to unite the immediately entertaining with the philosophically intricate. The directly tantalizing with the sophisticated contemporary musical in the depictions of all the surreal that happens after Alice has taken the trip down through the rabbit hole. form of the suite ‘Puzzles and Games from Alice in Wonderland’ – and no one, I think, sat and thought that for half an hour we listened to complicated contemporary music. Friendly woodwinds struck the pastoral English mood. And then it was otherwise just to have fun with Lewis Carroll’s nonsense-wise words and admire how perfectly Unsuk Chin masters writing for orchestra with all the extra means. From delicate harp and sampler to hissing wind machine and full brass pull-out.

(Thomas Michelsen, Politiken)

Korean Unsuk Chin is a cosmopolitan composer, her music is played in concert halls all over the world, and it is often immediately accessible with its strong light effects and diverse colors. It was illustrated in full measure at the award concert in the Concert Hall. With the composer Unsuk Chin, one has to resort to the

English word play with the double meaning: to play and to play. Her music is complicated enough, but in its essence it sounds accessible and life-giving. When she received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize on Saturday, she touched on her heroes and role models who have previously received the prize – including Russian Igor Stravinsky, Frenchman Olivier Messiaen and Hungarian György Ligeti. The 59-year-old composer Unsuk Chin was born and raised in South Korea but has lived in Germany since 1985. Thus ended a week in which Unsuk Chin had taken over Copenhagen with concerts and workshops during the ongoing Klang Festival. It was a great idea to get the actors of the music life to play together about such a push, and based on the speech of thanks, it seemed that the slightly shy main character had felt welcome in the company. 

(Valdemar Lønsted, Information)

This year, however, no one had expected that this week 22 would be such an overwhelming tsunami of exciting music, as was the case with the magnificent cavalcade of Chin works, which culminated in the prize concert on Sunday, but before that had unfolded in the Conservatory’s Concert Hall, in the Concert Church and in The Black Diamond. The latter place united Athelas Sinfonietta and Esbjerg Ensemble on the work Graffiti from 201213, which with its three movements, »Palimpsest«, »Notturno urbano« and »Passacaglia«, creates a whole new dimension by being music that seems to promise in a promising way away from the listener, as one stood and let a sparkling illuminated train pass with an insatiable number of carriages. 

(Peter Johannes Erichsen, Weekendavisen)