The ecstatic rhythms of Chin and Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps still sounds like new after more than a century. The performance of Unsuk Chin's Piano Concerto by Karina Canellakis and South Korean Sunwook Kim is also bound to be spectacular.

The Piano Concerto: 'vintage' Unsuk Chin
Unsuk Chin - this season's central composer at the Saturday Matinee - has written seven solo concertos to date, with the 1997 Piano Concerto as a masterful starting point. In November 2020, this work could already be heard at the Matinee, then of necessity in a coronary setting, of course with the composer's permission. Now Chin's refined art of orchestration sounds in its full glory. In each of the four movements, the Korean conjures up a different sound world for ears. Although the textures are "vintage" Chin, here and there influences of her teacher György Ligeti make themselves felt.

Mussorgsky and Stravinsky
A Russian line in this program is launched with Dawn on the Moskva River, the overture to Mussorgsky's unfinished "folk opera" Khovanshchina, about the tumultuous power struggle between the conservative prince Ivan Khovansky and the pro-Western soon-to-be czar Peter the Great. Igor Stravinsky, among others, interfered with the orchestration of Mussorgsky's piano score in 1913. In the same year, he completed his radically innovative Le sacre du printemps.