Unsuk Chin: Rocana, Violin Concerto

This disc was long-awaited. Unsuk Chin's violin concerto is one of the greatest achievements in that genre for some years and it famously won the Grawemeyer Award in 2004. Until now, fans had to be content with a low-quality radio recording passed around, but Analekta has finally brought us a beautifully sounding CD where the Violin Concerto is performed by the same soloist and conductor as the premiere -- Viviane Hagner and Kent Nagano -- with the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal. Plus, we get one of the composer's more talked about orchestral works.

Unsuk Chin's music is a wash of microtonal writing with a great sense of whimsy and child-like unrestraint. The four-movement Violin Concerto (2003) displays Chin's characteristic soundworld from the very start, as the violin enters on a simple two-note slow back and forth that suddenly flies into bouncy rhythms as the orchestra joins in, led by all manner of pitched percussion. In Chin's climaxes, gestures seem to fly about randomly, but the overall harmony of her writing is never compromised. The second movement is a slow one, with a remarkable ending with the violin is played at the extreme of its register. The third movement is a brief scherzo, while the last movement refers back to the first and leads to completion. The form is classical, but the variety of sounds within is anything but predictable, and the insane virtuosity of this part matched to a warm and attractive line makes this all the more appealing.

While the Violin Concerto continues all the unique features Chin's music was known for, "Rocana" for orchestra (2008) sounds rather different. The sense of capriciousness is gone, and instead we find slow, calculated spectralist soundscapes that sound more like the music of Marc-Andre Dalbavie than anything else. However, it is an extremely beautiful piece, becoming only more captivating over its 20-minute span, and Chin's hope to musically represent a play of lights seems very successful.

This is a live recording with brief applause at the end of each piece, but as I said, it is nonetheless superb-sounding. If you've never heard Unsuk Chin's music before, I wholeheartedly recommend this disc as well as the earlier DG disc with other fine pieces. I have heard some uncertainty about the longterm greatness of Chin's music, as some think it a bit too appealing, but who cares, there's so much fun you could be having right now. Really, get this.

Far too many composers of Unsuk Chin's generation have opted for an inoffensive, pasty way of writing. They have backed fearfully away from the bracing ground staked out by Boulez, Messian, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and the other greats of that generation. Instead we get a pseudo-Coplinesque style that's guaranteed to please nervous orchestra boards.

Unsuk Chin is having none of that. She is a modernist in the best sense of the word. While blessed with a broad-ranging lyricism and a vivid sense of orchestration, she doesn't pander. This is music that embraces our own time. The Violin Concerto places huge demands on the soloist. Viviane Hagner really gets her teeth into it, with the appropriate balance of flash and musicality. Chin doesn't shy away from the potential drama of a big concerto either--in many ways she has a classical heroic approach to the form.

The companion piece, Rocana, may be the more interesting piece of the two. It is a pure orchestral piece of about 21 minutes in duration. Beginning with aggressive jabs against a quiet background, it is quite satisfying. There's some really good brass writing in there, too.

A search on Amazon for Chin's music brings up only a single brief page of recordings. I hope that gets fixed. I'm sure there's a lot more to hear.

Unsuk Chin has written a mesmerizingly beautiful Violin Concerto (2001), and possibly one of the greatest written in the last half-century. What makes it unique is her use of fascinating, soft, high-pitched melimas, brushed strings over a tapestry of hushed orchestra. Much of the discourse that unfolds from the violin is subtle and allusive, inhabiting the realm of dreams. Because her melodies seemed exotic and Korean-inspired, Chin's Concerto brought to mind her older compatriot Isang Yun - but checking back on Yun, his music is much more aggressive and pounding (see my review of Art of Isang Yun 4). In the second movement, she uses brushed trilling effects that reminded me of the techniques used in the incredible Six Caprices of Salvatore Sciarrino (Salvatore Sciarrino: Caprices for Violin / Un'Immagine d'Arpocrate). But really, Chin's concerto seemed to me one of the rare heirs of Szymanowski's first.

Although the concerto has its "yang" side contrasting with its "yin" (concepts that I wouldn't normally use, but they are very much part of Isang Yun's philosophy), it is, unlike most contemporary music, rarely aggressive, and the "yang", when it occurs, clearly appears as the contrasting element to the all-embracing and framing "yin" rather than, as usual, the other way around. And even in the more dynamic moments, Chin always displays a wonderful and subtle sense of orchestral color, a unique gift for sending the violin to its upper registers, and having it not so much compete against the orchestra as ride on top of it. It really brings to our consciousness that there is an old, overriding and overbearing tradition in western classical music, brought to its apex in the sonata form: the lyrical theme always comes second, as a relief from the first, dominant and dominating one. With Chin, it is the other way around.

Rocaná - the title is Sanskrit and means "room of light" - is a 20 minute orchestral piece, completed in 2008. It is a fine piece, though not as uniquely original as the Violin Concerto. There Chin alternates the aggressive and assertive "yang" outbursts against "yin" passages of stasis and expectancy in a more traditional way, although those moments of stasis are more extended that they might have been in someone else's composition. Stylistically, Chin sounds to me as she is writing in the "contemporary music" style of Everyman (or woman) - I mean, Everyman or woman who doesn't satisfy himself with writing neo-romantic rehash or minimalist-repetitive music, but one who has developed upon the lessons of Ligeti's explorations in orchestral color or Lutoslawski's integration of color, drama and symphonic form in the 1970s. If you find me here less enthusiastic than I might have, don't get me wrong: Rocaná displays Chin's fine sense of color and drama, and it would have called for unrestricted praise in any collection of contemporary music - I'm also listening to and about to review two such collections, which happen to be also by female composers, Joan Tower, Tower: Sequoia; Island Prelude; Silver Ladders; Music for Cello & Orchestra and Augusta Read Thomas/Tania Leon, Augusta Read Thomas: Triple Concerto; Wind Dance/ Tania León: Batá/Carabali. But the Violin Concerto takes you in such another dimension that Rocaná, as good as it is, sounds only average heard after.

The two pieces were recorded live, in January and March 2008. Until the final applause, I had no suspicion of it whatsoever. TT is a shortish 48-minutes, but given how exceptional the Violin Concerto is, this is no deterrent to giving the disc five stars.