6 - Unsuk Chin (b. 1961)

Summary

I have never met the South Korean composer in person but have seen many of her photographs. In looking at her pictures one day, there loomed in the background the deeply furrowed face of Isang Yun (1917–95) whom I had visited at his Berlin home some decades before. Yun's face, the expression of his eyes, his stooping figure, the slowness of his gestures bore traces of the hardships he had undergone: both he and his wife had been kidnapped by the South Korean authorities in 1967—together with fifteen other Korean nationals living in the Federal Republic. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death.

There was a universal outcry, with Igor Stravinsky, Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karajan, and Luigi Dallapiccola among those signing a petition for his release. Eventually, Yun was able to return to Germany; he obtained West German citizenship and never returned to his native country.

If you read Unsuk Chin's interview about her life with Stefan Drees, you are spared Yun's horror story but do get a very graphic picture of the thorny path that has eventually led her to world fame as one of the major composers living today. It is a veritable fairy tale and one cannot but bow one's head in honor and appreciation of her achievement.

In preparing the German edition of my Three Questions book, I listened to a great many works by Unsuk Chin (one of the new contributors to the volume) and in my introduction, I rendered my impressions in some detail. In 2014, the Lucerne Festival featured her music and premiered a new work commissioned by the Roche pharmaceutical company. A book was also published and at Unsuk Chin's request, my introduction was included, both in the original German and the English translation by Thomas May.

To give you an idea of the way I hear Chin's music, here are a few excerpts from that text:

Unsuk Chin's works have afforded me a completely new experience of music; never before have I encountered a contemporary composer, male or female, who has had as much to say to me as she does that is new, unusual, unsettling, fascinating, and at times terrifying.