Programme Guide

“I tried consciously or unconsciously to integrate the bright light and colours I encounter in my dreams, whose vibrancy never fades, into the soundscape of my compositions,” says Unsuk Chin. The South Korean-born composer’s music is characterised by iridescent cascades of sound and highly virtuoso instrumentation – and is often laced with a strong pinch of surreal humour.

The adopted Berliner’s piano concerto is a unique work that was influenced by the Baroque music of Scarlatti as much as by Modernism. Chin wrote about the four-movement piece, “I wanted to emphasise the aspects of vitality, motor function and virtuosity, in short the playful side of the piano.”

Virtuosity can also be found in Jean Sibelius’s Second Symphony, which was hailed as a symbol of national pride by the patriotic Finnish press after its acclaimed premiere in 1902. The simmering conflict between Russia and Finland had been escalating since the February Manifesto, which severely restricted the autonomy of the then Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. In this tense political atmosphere, many interpreted Sibelius’s powerful work as a manifesto of resistance against Russification – conductor Robert Kajanus even believed he could hear the “flaming protest against all the injustice” in the second movement. Sibelius himself thought little of this – the central themes of this movement in particular had not occurred to him in deep Finnish forests, but in sun-drenched Italian gardens.