Composer Unsuk Chin ruminates on Beethoven in her ‘subito con forza’

Subito con forza (2020), a short concert opener by South Korean composer Unsuk Chin, has rapidly become her most performed work. It takes its name from the marking that Beethoven frequently used in his scores: “suddenly with power.” 

A joint commission from BBC Radio 3, the Kölner Philharmonie and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, it was written as part of the Beethoven 250 celebrations in 2020. Chin reports that she drew inspiration from the composer’s conversation books, especially the line: “Dur und Moll. Ich bin ein Gewinner.” (“Major and minor. I am a winner.”)

The work had its premiere on Sept. 24, 2020, with Klaus Mäkelä leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Mäkelä will perform subito con forza with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in concerts Dec. 18-20.

In her program note, Chin writes: “What particularly appeals to me are the enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme serenity”; subito con forza plays with these contrasts, erupting into a first chord with the full force of the orchestra, then subsiding into a hushed string section."

Of her work in general, Chin has said: “My music is a reflection of my dreams. I try to render into music the visions of immense light and of an incredible magnificence of colors that I see in all my dreams, a play of light and colors floating through the room and at the same time forming a fluid sound sculpture. Its beauty is very abstract and remote, but it is for these very qualities that it addresses the emotions and can communicate joy and warmth.” 

After its U.K. premiere at the 2021 BBC Proms, the Times of London described subito con forza as  “effective and eerie, with plenty happening in five teeming minutes. Chin’s ear for color is her greatest weapon.”

Chin’s publisher Boosey & Hawkes, in a catalog blurb, says of the work: "The rapid shifts of mood or texture in Beethoven’s music are reinvented through the volatility of Chin’s score and its glittering orchestration. Alongside its recognizable allusions to Beethovenian gestures, subito con forza is also a response to that composer’s modernist ambitions to stretch the boundaries of musical language, as if in defiance against life’s challenges. Chin describes how ’Beethoven’s struggle to communicate and his hearing loss frequently resulted in an inner rage and frustration. What particularly appeals are the enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme serenity. It profoundly and poignantly speaks of something fundamental about the human condition.’ ”

Born in Seoul, Chin studied with Ligeti in Hamburg, and now lives in Berlin. Winner of the 2004 Grawemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto, Chin has composed electronic and acoustic scores, demonstrating her ear for instrumentation, orchestral color and rhythmic imagery.  

Chin’s subito con forza, "takes a gesture from Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and dances it around through a series of oratorical pronouncements and clattery percussion,”
wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Guardian observed: "An orchestral miniature haunted by Beethovenian gestures. Emphatic opening chords, familiar rhythmic patterns, comically repetitive sequences: these all sounded anew amid Chin’s own exquisite orchestral palette — icy shivers of strings, rasping woodwind and ghostly muted trumpets."


The site iNews declared: “References to [Beethoven’s] works fizzed in, then imploded — the brass passing the parcel of the Fifth Symphony’s opening rhythm, or the Emperor Concerto’s flourishes derailing — and Chin’s fresh-spirited reinvention of Beethoven’s inner dramatic instinct was seriously impressive.”