Happy 100th birthday, György Kurtág!

On 19 February, György Kurtág hopes to celebrate his 100th birthday. That very day the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ will organise the concert Happy 100 György!, featuring music by Kurtág himself and kindred spirits, as well as three new pieces by Dutch composers. The day after, Die Stechardin, his second opera, will premiere in Budapest.

György Kurtág, the Hungarian grandmaster of incisive aphorisms (Budapest, 1926), is no stranger in the Netherlands. As early as the 1970s, pianist Geoffrey Madge and the Residentie Orkest championed his existentialist music. Yet he rose to true fame in the 1990s, when Reinbert de Leeuw started advocating his music, dedicating many memorable concerts to the amiable composer, with whom he forged a close bond.

In 2016, the Muziekgebouw honoured Kurtág on the occasion of his 90th birthday. During a festive portrait concert, De Leeuw conducted the Asko|Schönberg through works by Webern (a great inspiration for Kurtág), György Ligeti, his namesake and compatriot, and works by Kurtág himself. In the birthday concert on 19 February 2026 again a work by Ligeti will be played: his groundbreaking Poème Symphonique, whose music consists of the ticking of 100 metronomes wound to different tempos.

Kurtág and Reinbert de Leeuw

In 2016, Kurtág and his inseparable wife Márta were too frail to travel from Budapest to Amsterdam for the concert. However, they did appear in a preview of the documentary The Three Kurtágs, made by their niece Judit. This was unique: György and Márta Kurtág often performed as a piano duo, but they never became public figures like Ligeti; they lived a secluded life.

Sitting comfortably together on their sofa, the two discuss the progress of the CD recordings of a large part of Kurtág’s work, which Reinbert de Leeuw has been working on since 2013. They charmingly bounce off each other in a lively conversation, in which a sentence started by one is naturally finished by the other – as if they were literally speaking with one voice. Their love for each other and for De Leeuw is palpable.

They regret not being able to be physically present during the recordings, but because Reinbert plays these back over the phone after each session and also visits them regularly in person, they are still able to comment on them. The notoriously critical Kurtág, who sometimes calls out ‘Nein, nicht so!’ when Reinbert merely raises his arms to begin a piece, is now full of praise. ‘It’s as if they recorded the music in their mother tongue,’ he says with shining eyes.

Musical mother tongue

The three-disc CD box containing all of Kurtág’s conducted choral and ensemble works was released a year later. In the accompanying booklet Kurtág gratefully refers to it as “a royal gift”. That is no exaggeration, because on this release from the German label ECM, Reinbert de Leeuw once again surpassed himself. With his relentless determination to get to the heart of the matter, he leads Asko|Schönberg, Groot Omroepkoor, Cappella Amsterdam and a selection of soloists to intense performances, that allow Kurtág’s soul-piercing sounds to penetrate to the very core.

This unique historical document is still available for purchase for less than forty euros – a bargain. Kurtág’s suggestion that the musicians and singers perform his music as if it were their own mother tongue is no idle chatter. Language is extremely important to the sensitive Hungarian composer – in more ways than one.

He often refers to Béla Bartók as “my musical mother tongue”. But he has created his own unique grammar from poignant, aphoristic bursts of sound that spring from a deep inner necessity. He is a great lover of poetry and literature: of the eleven pieces on the compilation, seven are vocal. Kurtág even learned Russian so that he could read Dostoevsky; three cycles on the CD box set are in this language.

The best known of these is Messages from the Late Miss R.V. Trussova, with which he made his breakthrough in Western Europe in the 1980s. In 21 miniatures, a soprano sings of bitter experiences of love. The longest song lasts 3 minutes, the shortest 22 seconds. In that short span of time, Kurtág sketches an entire novel. Unfortunately none of the three vocal cycles will be performed in the concert Happy 100 György! on 19 February. Het Muziek, successor to Asko|Schönberg, will however perform Akrostichon – Wortspiel for soprano and ensemble by Unsuk Chin.

Kurtág’s first opera causes a sensation

In 2016 the 90-year-old Kurtág was still working on his first and so far only opera, Fin de Partie (Endgame), based on Samuel Beckett’s play of the same name. He had seen it in Paris in 1957 on Ligeti’s recommendation and called it “one of the most powerful experiences of my life”. The opera was commissioned by Teatro alla Scala Milan in 2010, and he had been working on it ever since. Together with Mártá, he significantly condensed the story; only sixty percent of the original text remained. On the other hand, they added Beckett’s poem Roundelay as a prologue.

This prologue premiered during a festival in honour of his 90th birthday at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where he himself once studied. The world premiere of the complete opera took place in November 2018 at the Teatro alla Scala, directed by Pierre Audi, who died last year, with Markus Stenz conducting. Kurtág and his wife Mártá were again unable to attend; she died a year later.

This first work by the then 92-year-old composer caused a real sensation. The absurd libretto, which barely has any plot and revolves around four people waiting for an indeterminate ending, was immediately hailed as a classic by the international press. In March 2019, the opera was also performed at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and again Markus Stenz. Theaterkrant called it “a true musical masterpiece”, while de Volkskrant saw how “supreme aimlessness can lead to supreme beauty”. Unfortunately, I had to miss the performance due to illness. 

Ever-expanding piano series Jatékok (Games)

For Kurtág’s 95th birthday in 2021, the Muziekgebouw organised an ambitious three-day festival, which was unfortunately cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. Instead, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard played excerpts from Jatékok (Games) via a live stream. In this ever-expanding series of miniatures for one and/or two pianos – which he himself calls “pedagogical performance pieces” – Kurtág explores a musical idea or portrays a friend.

He frequently played these with Mártá, and they recorded a number of them on CD. In 2021, Aimard presented several brand-new miniatures, because even at the age of 95, Kurtág was still composing every day. During the concert Happy 100 György! on 19 February, Het Muziek will play a selection from Jatékok in an arrangement by Olivier Cuendet. This organist and composer previously made an orchestral version of Zwiegespräch for string quartet and electronics, which Kurtág composed together with his son of the same name.

The icing on the cake is the rarely performed Lebenslauf for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart and two basset horns. Kurtág’s works are placed in context with Ligeti’s Poème symphonique mentioned above and works by Unsuk Chin and Thomas Adès. There are also three world premieres, inspired by the number one hundred. Mayke Nas wrote 100 seconds, Huba de Graaff composed 100 notes, and Jasper de Bock made 100 years (I, II, III, IV).

Kurtág finishes second opera at the age of 99

Kurtág completed his first opera when he was 92 years old, but he did not rest on his laurels afterwards. Commissioned by the Budapest Music Centre, he composed a new opera, Die Stechardin, which will premiere on 20 February 2026 during a birthday festival in Budapest.

The libretto is based on letters and writings by the German scientist Georg Christoph Lindberg, who had a relationship with his student Maria Dorothea Stechard, twenty years his junior. Although she died at the age of seventeen and he later remarried, she always remained his great love. ‘She reconciled me with all of humanity,’ Lindberg wrote to a friend.

The libretto poses recognisable questions about life. Is there an afterlife? Does our soul live on after our death? Is there love that transcends the grave? The action is set in another world – heaven, an alternative reality?  – where Maria waits for her beloved to rejoin her.

Kurtág completed this three-part monologue for soprano and orchestra in June 2025 and orchestrated it together with Zsolt Serei. Maria Husmann, who has been working with Kurtág for decades, sings the title role, accompanied by the Concerto Budapest Orchestra under András Keller.

Farewell

It is not surprising that Kurtág was drawn to this theme: in 2019, he lost Mártá, who had been his partner for 72 years and remained his inspiration throughout his life. While his opera Fin de partie can be viewed as an artistic testament, Die Stechardin may be considered a farewell, celebrating the beauty of life and love. It expresses reconciliation with death and Kurtág’s hope for a speedy reunion with his beloved.

May he be able to attend the world premiere on 20 February 2026 in Budapest, and then join Márta, wherever she may be.

On 19 February, I will moderate the introduction to the birthday concert Happy 100 György in the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ. Starting at 7.15 p.m., admission free. I will speak with Fedor Teunisse, artistic director of Het Muziek, and the composers De Bock, De Graaff and Nas.

Thea Derks speaking to Unsuk Chin

Unsuk Chin and Thea Derks during introduction to a concert of NJO Symphony Orchestra under Antony Hermus in De Vereeniging Nijmegen on 17 August 2012. They’re performing Chin’s Rocaná.

#AntonyHermus #DeVereeniging #TheaDerks #UnsukChin

Erik Satie in Panorama de Leeuw XIII

Hoe ontstond de Satie-rage in de jaren zestig? Die vraag beantwoordde ik gisteren in de dertiende aflevering van Panorama de Leeuw, gebaseerd op mijn biografie Reinbert de Leeuw, mens of melodie. Ik schreef er bovendien over voor Cultuurpers.

Een belangrijk promotor van Erik Satie was de Italiaans-Franse pianist Aldo Ciccolini, maar zodra Reinbert de Leeuw midden jaren zeventig de arena betrad met zijn veel tragere vertolkingen, ontketende hij een ware rage. Al snel was Satie’s vroege pianomuziek niet meer weg te denken uit de publieke ruimte.

In Panorama de Leeuw XIII draaide ik naast bekende stukken ook liederen – met de sopraan Marjanne Kweksilber – en een fragment uit Vexations, een thema van anderhalve minuut dat 840 keer herhaald moet worden. Dit wapenfeit is voor zover bekend door geen enkele pianist ooit (solo) gerealiseerd. U beluistert de uitzending hier.

Vanwege de eindeloze herhalingen die Satie voorschreef in Vexations wordt hij wel beschouwd als een voorloper van minimalisten als Philip Glass en Steve Reich. Een generatie jonger dan deze pioniers van de herhalingsmuziek is John Adams, die echter al snel andere wegen insloeg en inspiratie zocht in de muziektraditie.

Het Koninklijk Concertgebouw Orkest bracht op 15 en 16 oktober de Nederlandse première van Scheherazade.2 voor viool en orkest. Adams schreef dit stuk op het lijf van de Amerikaanse violiste Leila Josefowicz, een ’empowered woman’, die soeverein weet te ontkomen aan haar fundamentalistische belagers.

Ik had Adams over dit stuk geïnterviewd voor het tijdschrift Preludium en verzorgde ook de inleiding bij het concert van 16 oktober. Na afloop ging ik met Adams op de foto.

John Adams + Thea Derks, Concertgebouw 16 oktober 2015 (c) Renske Vrolijk

Scheherazade.2 – geen Vioolconcert maar een ‘dramatische symfonie’ volgens Adams – verwijst uiteraard naar de Vertellingen van 1001 nacht, die de componist naar de actualiteit vertaalde. Het muzikale resultaat viel me niet mee, zoals ik schreef op Cultuurpers.

Ook de enscenering van Verdi’s opera Il trovatore die Àlex Ollé maakte voor De Nationale Opera stelde mij teleur. Dat kwam niet alleen door de matige uitvoering, maar vooral ook door de grauwe enscenering en statische personenregie. Deze stond elke mogelijke identificatie met de hoofdpersonen in de weg; alleen de mezzo Violeta Urmana wist als de zigeunerin Azucena daadwerkelijk emotie over te brengen. Hier lees je mijn recensie.

Wel zeer geslaagd was het portretconcert van Unsuk Chin dat het Nieuw Ensemble op 22 oktober presenteerde in de donderdagavondserie van het Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ. Opnieuw werd ik getroffen door de rijke kleurschakeringen die Chin weet aan te brengen in haar muziek, vooral in het op Koreaanse tradities geïnspireerde Gougalon. Ik sprak met Chin voor Cultuurpers.

Unsuk Chin

Ondertussen ben ik druk bezig met de voorbereidingen voor mijn lezing over Arvo Pärt op dinsdag 24 november in VondelCS. Pärt werd dit jaar tachtig en dit wordt uitbundig gevierd met talloze concerten door ensembles, koren en orkesten. Hij werd vooral bekend vanwege zijn ‘nieuwe spirituele muziek’, maar die ontstond niet zonder slag of stoot.

Het lijkt me een uitdaging de lange ontwikkeling van Pärt op de voet te volgen, met muziekvoorbeelden van zijn vroege klassieke stukken, via heftig modernistische composities tot zijn alom geliefde welluidende ‘tintinnabulistijl’.

Mijn lezing vindt plaats in de zaal waar ook het radioprogramma Opium op 4 wordt uitgezonden. Hoofdgast is die avond het Cello8tet Amsterdam, dat later dit jaar een cd met muziek van Pärt uitbrengt. Ik heb hen bereid gevonden iets te komen vertellen over hun samenwerking met de Estse grootmeester en een stuk van hem te spelen.

Ik zie er erg naar uit en nodig iedereen van harte uit de lezing op 24 november in VondelCS bij te wonen. Hij duurt van 20.30-22.00 uur en daarna kun je bijven zitten voor de uitzending van Opium op 4. De entree voor dit alles is slechts € 10,-  en reserveren doe je via dit mailadres: [email protected]

#AldoCiccolini #AlexOlle #ArvoPärt #Cello8tetAmsterdam #Cultuurpers #DeNationaleOpera #ErikSatie #GiuseppeVerdi #IlTrovatore #JohnAdams #LeilaJosefowicz #MarjanneKweksilber #MensOfMelodie #NieuwEnsemble #PanoramaDeLeeuw #Preludium #ReinbertDeLeeuw #TheaDerks #UnsukChin #VioletaUrmana

Between diapers & dishes – the (in)visibility of the female composer

Walkyrien (c) Emil Doepler, via Wikipedia Media

Amsterdam, 8 March 2018. No chance to miss today is women’s day. The media are brimming with articles about the unequal pay for women and their still limited representation in prestigious positions. – In politics, the business world, universities and the arts.

The most conservative is perhaps the classical music world, where the female composer still has to fend for her right to exist. Even in 2018 she still has to cram her creative work in between domestic tasks, it seems. – Will a male composer ever be asked how he combines his work ‘with the children’? Despite tiny steps in the right direction, his female colleague still balances between diapers & dishes.

Perotinus & Leoninus

My own history began in a village in Limburg. I was not allowed to join the local brass band – simply because I was a girl. Later I started my own pop group. Though I wrote all the songs, invariably in interviews my male band members were asked all the questions. During my entire studies in musicology only two ladies were mentioned. Hildegard von Bingen was treated extensively, but after that it remained silent. In my my final year one song by Clara Schumann was analyzed.

During concerts I heard music from Perotinus & Leoninus, Bach and Handel, Mozart and Beethoven, Stravinsky and Bartók. Only in the world of new music I was sparsely treated to works by Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidulina, or Kaija Saariaho and Unsuk Chin. When I started working at Radio 4, I made thematic programs on countless subjects. But the moment I dedicated a series to female composers, I was deprecatingly dubbed ‘Her of the Women’.

Smyth ‘influenced’ by unborn Britten

Undaunted I tried to get work by female composers performed, but I stumbled on a wall of unwillingness and bias. The most poignant was my experience with the opera The Wreckers by Ethel Smyth. Everyone I played a recording to was enthusiastic about the beautiful and powerful music. – Invariably followed by the comment that Smyth had been ‘strongly influenced’ by Peter Grimes of Benjamin Britten.

A hilarious argument: Britten wasn’t even born when Smyth composed her opera in 1906. Indeed, Peter Grimes did not appear until 1945, a year after her death. When I pointed this out, my interlocutors fell silent, baffled. But the penny did not drop and the opera remained unperformed. While a rediscovered second-class composition of a man is not seldom hailed ‘discovery of the century’.

Netherlands’ Men’s Days and Bosmans Prize

During the yearly Netherlands’ Music Days hardly any women’s compositions were performed, so I dubbed them the Netherlands’ Men’s Days; in 2010 the event died a silent death. Even the composition competition named after Henriëtte Bosmans was never won by a woman. After I had criticized this in a column, at least some female jurors were recruited. But it wasn’t until 2008, when an audience prize was established, that this finally went to a female composer. After 2011 also this competition ceased to exist.

When the Festival of Early Music Utrecht put Felix Mendelssohn in the context of his time, not one note from his sister Fanny was played. She was not only Felix’s source of inspiration and sounding board, but also a composer who was highly appreciated in her own time. Most probably she developed the ‘Song without Words’, which is invariably attributed to her brother. After yet another column of mine the all-male concept was somewhat released. Since then, sporadically music by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Barbara Strozzi, Hildegard of Bingen or Isabella Leonarda was programmed.

Modern music world forms an exception

A positive exception is formed by the circuit of modern music, such as the Thursday Evening Concerts of Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ. The same goes for the Red Sofa series of De Doelen, the Oranjewoudfestival and Dag in de branding. In Gaudeamus Muziekweek, women’s work sounds regularly, although the competition itself is still dominated by men.

The coming edition of Classical Encounters in The Hague only has male works in store for us, even thought the programmer is a woman. Muziekgebouw Eindhoven features two ladies in its new season; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra one; the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra none. In the upcoming Opera Forward Festival, only two female composers will be represented.

Bright spots

It is sad that even in the 21st century we have to fight for the music of women composers. Nevertheless, there have been some bright spots recently, thanks in part to the social media. Databases with female composers from all ages can be updated online and this information is shared quickly and easily. The #MeToo discussion also contributes to a greater awareness of the subordination of women.

In terms of policy, some steps have been made as well. Mayke Nas succeeded Willem Jeths as Composer Laureate in 2016. A year later, Kate Moore was the first woman ever to win the prestigious Matthijs Vermeulen Prize. The BBC initiated the project Celebrating Women Composers and the new February Festival gave voice to Fanny Mendelsohn and Clara Schumann. From season 2018-19 onwards, the Concertgebouw and NTRZaterdagMatinee will pay structural attention to composing ladies. Its counterpart AVROTROSVrijdagconcert also regularly features music by women composers.

Small successes that ‘Her of the Women’ will continue to fight for in the future.

Tonight Silbersee will perform music by Seung-Won Oh in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, I will speak to her during the introduction at 7.15 pm.

Please support independent music jounalism. Any amount is welcome. Thanks!

#ClaraSchumann #EthelSmyth #FannyMendelssohn #GalinaUstvolskaya #HenriëtteBosmans #HildegardVonBingen #KaijaSaariaho #MeToo #PeterGrimes #SofiaGubaidulina #TheWreckers #UnsukChin #WomenSDay

Unsuk Chin: grinning teeth and false magic in Gougalōn

Unsuk Chin (1961) is one of the most successful composers of our time. She won the Gaudeamus Award in 1985, the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 2004, and was recently honoured with the Bach Prize 2019 of the city of Hamburg. On Saturday 18 May the German ensemble Musikfabrik will perform her popular piece Gougalōn in NTRZaterdagMatinee in Concertgebouw Amsterdam. The concert will be broadcast live on Radio 4.

Chin was born in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, as the daughter of a minister. When she was two years old her father bought a piano for his church services. She was immediately fascinated, but there was no money for piano lessons. She learnt to play the instrument on her own account and from the age of eight she contributed to the family income as a piano accompanist for wedding ceremonies.

From Tchaikovsky to Ligeti

In high school she got to know music by composers like Brahms and Tchaikovsky and decided to start composing herself. When she heard a piece by György Ligeti at the Seoul Conservatory, she was so impressed that she asked him by letter to teach her. He agreed and in 1985 she moved to Hamburg. The acquaintance was a shock: Ligeti rejected all her previously composed pieces. According to him they were well written but lacked personality.

Ironically, it was precisely in this period that she won the Gaudeamus Music Prize with Spektra for three celli, the piece with which she graduated from Seoul Conservatory. Under Ligeti’s tutorship she developed her own style, in which beauty of sound and humour go hand in hand. In 1991 she composed the witty Akrostichon-Wortspiel for the Dutch Nieuw Ensemble and solo soprano, based on nonsense lyrics. Two years later, this piece marked her international breakthrough.

East meets West

Chin tirelessly searches for unheard sounds and timbres. She writes for common western instruments, but manages to elicit eastern sounding sonorities from them; sometimes she also uses Asian instruments. In this way she organically links her Korean background with her western education. In her frequently performed ensemble piece Gougalōn Chin once again addresses her roots.

The idea arose during a stay in China in 2008-09. In her own words she experienced a ‘Proustian moment’ when visiting cities such as Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The atmosphere of the old and poor residential neighbourhoods with their narrow, winding alleys, ambulatory food vendors, and market places reminded her of her childhood in Seoul. This evoked long forgotten images of travelling amateur musicians and actors trying to foist homemade medicines on the common man/woman by means of street theatre.

Clattering teeth and dancing barracks

The title Gougalōn derives from old High German. The word’s meanings range from ‘tampering’ and ‘fooling people with fake magic’ to ‘making ridiculous movements’ and ‘divination’. Chin emphasizes she does not directly refer to the amateurish street theatre of her youth and that the music is not intended to be illustrative; she describes her piece as ‘imaginary folk music’. Yet it is difficult to avoid associations with the subtitles of the six movements, especially since Chin paints hilarious scenes with special sound effects.

For instance, the solo violin plays seemingly completely out of tune glissandi in ‘Lament of the bald singer’, the percussionists suggestively produce rattling sounds in ‘The grinning fortune teller with the false teeth’, in ‘Dance around the shacks’ long held lines of the strings are supported by swaying brass, while in ‘The hunt for the quack’s plait’ a pandemonium bursts loose that would well suit a pursuit scene in an animated film.

Gougalōn was well received by both audience and press. ‘Vivid, extravagant and technically assured to the point of virtuosity’, opined The Guardian; ‘Chin successfully pairs a typically German love of the grotesque with an Asiatic sound world, to hilarious effect’, wrote Backtrack. 

On the programme, too are world premières by Rozalie Hirs and Sander Germanus, and works by Carola Bauckholt and Rebecca Saunders.

https://youtu.be/Gp-dm9OS10M

#Gougalōn #GyörgyLigeti #Musikfabrik #NieuwEnsemble #NTRZaterdagmatinee #UnsukChin

Rebecca Saunders composes music like a sculptor

Women composers invisible? Yes, they are still very much underrepresented in most concert series, though not in this season’s NTRZaterdagMatinee. Of the five compositions the German Ensemble Musikfabrik presents on 18 May, four were written by a woman. Among them the British-German Rebecca Saunders, who was recently awarded the Ernst von Siemens Prize 2019. Helen Bledsoe will play Bite for bass flute solo.

Saunders, born in London in 1967, studied violin and composition at the University of Edinburgh. In 1991 she received the German DAAD stipend, with which she studied composition with Wolfgang Rihm at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. After three years she returned to Edinburgh, where she obtained her doctorate with Nigel Osborne in 1998. A year earlied she had moved to Berlin.

Magical physicality

Saunders has won many prizes, was a visiting professor at the renowned Ferienkurse für neue Musik in Darmstadt and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Huddersfield University in 2018.

She is particularly interested in timbre and likes to explore the possibilities of instruments by means of playing techniques of her own designing. ‘For me what’s really important is enabling the listener to feel the magical physicality of sound: the timbre, the colour, the mass and the weight of sound,’ she once said. She compares herself to a sculptor working with different materials.

Her scores are teeming with detailed instructions, sometimes she also employs objects such as metronomes, radios, record players and mechanical music boxes. In her music she regularly refers to artists and writers, such as James Joyce and Derek Jarman. In her recent work, she often leans towards Samuel Beckett and his fascination with shadow and silence.

This also applies to Bite for bass flute solo, which she composed in 2015 for Helen Bledsoe, Musikfabrik’s solo flute player. It is part of a series of solo pieces she has written in recent years for performers with whom she has worked together closely; in her score she explicitly thanks Bledsoe for their pleasant ‘sound sessions’.

Daunting solo

The score is quite daunting. The flutist produces quarter tones and multiphonics, plays with Flatterzunge and has to constantly – and – quickly switch between (extremely) fast and (very) slow tempi. The dynamics vary from the softest pianissimo to the loudest fortissimo. Meanwhile, Bledsoe whispers, sings or shouts texts by Beckett in her instrument, giving the physical sound a different colour and intention.

On her website Helen Bledsoe describes Bite as ‘a massive, expressive, sighing and ranting piece for bass flute with low B’. She premiered it in 2016, one critic praising it for being was ‘quite athletic’. Yet two years later Saunders made a revision in which she deleted several parts. This version will be performed for the first time in the concert on 18 May, after which Bledsoe hopes to record it for CD.

NTRZaterdagMatinee 18 May, Concertgebouw Amsterdam 2pm
Musikfabrik/Emilio Pamárico
World premières by Rozalie Hirs and Sander Germanus; further works by Rebecca Saunders, Unsuk Chin and Carola Bauckholt

#CarolaBauckholt #HelenBledsoe #Musikfabrik #NTRZaterdagmatinee #RebeccaSaunders #RozalieHirs #UnsukChin

Unsuk Chin: ‘Without an inner conflict I’ll come to nothing’

The music of Unsuk Chin was often performed in the Netherlands by the Nieuw Ensemble and in the radio series NTRZaterdagMatinee. On 24 and 25 September she debuts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Subito con sforza, a commission. I interviewed Chin for the September issue of Preludium, the magazine of Concertgebouw and Concertgebouw Orchestra. Here is the English translation.

Born in Seoul in 1961, Unsuk Chin grew up as the daughter of a minister. Contrary to what one might expect in an Asian country, not Buddhism is the main religion in South Korea, but Protestantism. The family wasn’t rich: ‘We had a piano at home but no records; the people of Korea were very poor at the time.’ There was no money for piano lessons either, so she taught herself to play the instrument; from the age of eight she even contributed to the family income by performing at wedding ceremonies.

She got to know classical music thanks to friends: ‘I knew a few people who owned a gramophone and some records of the great masters, which I listened to when I visited them. The most modern piece I heard was Stravinsky’s Petrushka, but I also loved Brahms and especially Tchaikovsky. I even copied the score of his Sixth Symphony because I could not afford to buy the sheet music.’ To her taste this piece is often performed too clichédly: ‘The exaggerated pathos doesn’t do justice to the music. The Pathétique has an incredibly logical structure. When you simply perform it without exaggeration it works perfectly, as in the recordings of Haitink with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.’

Volcanic eruptions, extreme serenity

Beethoven was also one of her favourite composers, because ‘he was constantly looking for new directions. He was the first consciously modern composer, in the sense that every piece asked for original solutions, even if this meant breaking through existing forms. I wrote my new piece on the occasion of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. Subito con sforza contains some hidden references to his music. – What particularly appeals to me are the enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme serenity.’

Just like Tchaikovsky, Beethoven at times found inspiration in folk music. Chin herself sometimes speaks of ‘imaginary folk music’ in relation to her own work. ‘But that remark mainly concerned my ensemble piece Gougalōn’, she retorts. ‘In any case, the organic connection between classical concert music and folk music was broken a long time ago. You only still find it in the Viennese Classics, Mahler, Stravinsky’s Russian ballets and with Eastern European composers such as Bartók, Janáček and Ligeti.’

Nevertheless, she does entertain a musical connection with various kinds of music: ‘As an antidote to avant-garde dogmas and clichés from New Music, it is important and fascinating to relate to very diverse forms of music. However, I consciously make no distinction between classical and folk music. My work cannot be geographically localized, and I don’t consider this desirable either.’

Writer’s block

Subito con sforza was inspired by Beethoven’s conversation books. Especially his remark: ‘Dur und Moll. Ich bin ein Gewinner. [Major and minor. I’m a winner.] Is composing a struggle for her? ‘Definitely! Without an inner conflict I come to nothing. Once I have accepted a commission I always think I have an idea that I only have to develop further. But the moment I start, I at once get the feeling that I have no idea whatsoever. Every day I experience dozens of writer’s blocks, but somehow it progresses, millimetre by millimetre. When the piece is finished I realize that I had it in me from the beginning. I have to pay that price over and over again. The advantage of having more experience is that you know that at some point a door will open and the piece will be finished.’

How does she deal with commissions in general? ‘First I have to think whether I’ll accept them at all. That may take quite a while, for I carry ideas with me for a very long time. When I first heard the cellist Alban Gerhardt play, I immediately decided to write a cello concerto, but it took me eight years to realize it. I do make sketches, but very sparingly. At a certain point the bomb bursts, as it were, and a more intense compositional process begins.’

Prokofiev

On 24 and 25 September her music will be performed together with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. ‘I have always been fascinated by his exuberant inventiveness. By the way, I have a difference of opinion with many of my fellow composers. In comparison with Stravinsky, for instance, Prokofiev may seem a bit coarse, a bit less “sophisticated”, but I have always loved his directness. That incredible, never-ending stream of ideas, the many masks of his music, the element of surprise! Of his piano concertos the radical Second is my favourite, but the classicist Third is a fireworks of pianistic virtuosity and ensemble playing.’

Prokofiev is often considered a radical modernist. Chin called Beethoven ‘modern’, too. Is it important to be modern and what does this actually mean? ‘No idea! Composers have always considered themselves contemporary. Bach would have been shocked at his music being labelled “baroque”. Personally I have the feeling that I don’t belong to any school or movement, but I do try to write music that is “modern”. In the sense of: starting from our time, making reflective and critical use of the compositional possibilities available today.’

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