Chin: Gougalon / Graffiti / Double Concert

The Ensemble Intercontemporain and its musical director Pierre Bleuse continue their monographs on the great personalities of contemporary music. Following the multi-award-winning Ligeti, this album celebrates composer Unsuk Chin. The Korean-born artist moved to Germany in the 1980s. Her music captivates with an immediate sensuality, and the inexhaustible transformations of her instrumental polyphony create unparalleled sound constellations. This program presents her piece Gougalon (2009/12), which in six episodes with deliberately unusual instrumentation evokes the memory of the traveling amateur theaters of her home country. She presents it as "imaginary folk music, stylized and fragmented, appearing primitive only at first glance." Chin titled her 2013 piece for large ensemble "Graffiti." All sound registers are exhausted in a colorful, vivid, and varied way. "The musical language of 'Graffiti' oscillates between roughness and refinement, complexity and transparency," says the composer. Her Double Concerto for piano and percussion rounds off this program.