“Almost everything in the universe was created billions of years ago in cosmic explosions – including the Earth and our bodies, which, as science has proven, are made up of the remnants of stars.”

Unsuk Chin is the recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and has lived in Berlin for 38 years – in her own words, “a big city with the charm of a village”. Four works by the Seoul-born, internationally acclaimed composer will be performed by the Konzerthausorchester Berlin in the 2026/27 season.

“Subito con forza” (“suddenly, with force”; 2020) is full of allusions to Beethoven’s music and thus forms part of the complete symphonic cycle that Joana Mallwitz will be conducting around the 200th anniversary of his death in 2027. Unsuk Chin speaks of a “personal homage to arguably the first modernist composer in music history. Beethoven’s quest for originality completely changed the course of music history.” The composer immersed herself in his so-called ‘conversation notebooks’: “As his hearing deteriorated, he kept them to communicate with the outside world,” she explains. “The content ranges from the banal to the profound and is often enigmatic. The note ‘Major or minor. I am the victor.’ His struggle to communicate and his hearing loss likely led to inner rage and frustration, which may have been reflected in the extreme range of his musical language, from volcanic outbursts to otherworldly serenity.”

Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto (2009) thrives on the tension-filled ‘rivalry’ between soloist and orchestra: ‘The “aura” of the cello was the original core and forms the foundation of the music, so that the entire structure of the piece is “carried” by the cello. However, the orchestra responds to this with far greater antagonism than in traditional Classical-Romantic concertos. To explore the limits of the cello’s expressive power and expand the definition of ‘expression’, I also employ special playing techniques and demand unusual timbres, including noises and scratchy sounds. The unique artistry of soloist Alban Gerhardt has inspired me immensely. Not only his solo part, but also the orchestral parts are characterised by extreme virtuosity.”

A long-standing interest in astronomy and physics lies behind “Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles” (2018), which will be performed in April as part of our “Unter Sternen” festival: “Almost everything in the universe was created billions of years ago in cosmic explosions – including the Earth and our bodies, which, as scientifically proven, consist of the remnants of stars.” In light of this, anthropocentrism, as well as national, ethnic and religious chauvinism, seem to her downright “absurd”. The texts accompanying the work were provided by the metaphysical Baroque poet Henry Vaughan, the Romantic visionaries William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and modernist poets such as Giuseppe Ungaretti, Edith Södergran, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Eeva-Liisa Manner, Fernando Pessoa, Octavio Paz and Inger Christensen, as well as an almost surreal 17th-century English riddle poem.

The fourth work is also inspired by the cosmos: an ‘Alaraph’ (2022) is a so-called ‘pulsating star’ with a regular pulsation. These are pulsating, variable binary star systems in eccentric orbits, whose oscillations are caused by tidal forces. The star’s light curve resembles the pattern of a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram when its brightness is recorded over time. However, aspects of traditional Korean music also play a role, namely “’static’ court ritual music as well as lively folk music – both in terms of gesture and the structure of the work”, explains Unsuk Chin. However, there are no direct quotations. The focus is on the percussion section: “Unlike my other orchestral works, I have completely dispensed with melodic percussion instruments such as the vibraphone or glockenspiel. Instead, the characteristics of rhythmic percussion instruments are fully exploited. Consequently, ‘Alaraph’ is characterised by energy and physicality .”