Intercontemporain: Unsuk Chin Album Review – Rich, Strange Music with Kleidoscopic Colors | classical music

ShNsuk Chin describes her music as a conscious attempt to embody the visions she encounters in her dreams. This riveting album from Ensemble Intercontemporain presents three of the Korean-born, Berlin-based artist’s works: a triptych of dreamlike paintings that flicker and teem with kaleidoscopic colours.

The film begins with Gougalon, a playful pavilion inspired by touring amateur theaters in her country of origin. An instrumented piano and a percussion section buzzing with gongs, bells, bottles, and vibrato add riotous joy to six discordant episodes, including the bald singer’s lament, the grinning false-toothed fortune teller, and the mad chase of the charlatan’s pigtail. Top-notch engineering allows the listener to savor every iota and atom of sound.

Dimitri Vassilakis and Samuel Favre are the confirmed soloists in the Double Concerto for Piano, Percussion and Band, a 20-minute soundscape with reference points drawn from both Western and non-Western music. Under the confident direction of conductor Pierre Blues, the 19-instrument ensemble highlights Chen’s complex, free-flowing score with solid technique and a certain amount of skill.

Finally, there is Graffiti, a three-movement work for chamber orchestra, which oscillates between taut compositional complexity and graceful transparency. It begins with the Palimpsest, a staccato, multi-style movement, and concludes with the abrasive stabs and punches of the rhythmic Passacaille. And in the middle comes a haunting nighttime street scene, called Notturno Urbano, where droning bells combine with strange harmonic dissonances to conjure a rich, strange and unique atmosphere.

Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify