Composer Shin Dong-hoon (Lotte Concert Hall)
On Monday, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and cellist Han Jae-min will kick off the inaugural Korean edition of London’s leading summer festival BBC Proms, a week-long festival of classical music, choral music and music from West End musicals.
South Korean composer Chin Un-suk’s “Subito Con Forza" ("Suddenly With Power") written in 2020 will open Monday's concert, followed by “Nachtergebung” (“Surrender to the Night”), a cello concerto by Shin Dong-hoon, one of Chin’s pupils.
In a recent email interview, Shin, 41, who has commissions booked through 2030, shared insights into his inspirations and creative process.
“Nachtergebung,” commissioned as part of the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize, which Shin won in 2021, premiered in May 2022 at the Karajan Academy's 50th-anniversary concert. Conducted by Kirill Petrenko, the performance featured Bruno Delepelaire, principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic, as the soloist. In 2024, the piece was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
“I have long tried to work within the Romantic tradition of expressing emotion through harmony, tonal gestures and sound materials. This work allowed me to take a step further in that direction," Shin said.
Composed of five movements, Shin explained that the title "Nachtergebung" is taken from the poem of the same title by Austrian poet Georg Trakl. Each of the five movements was inspired by Trakl's poem: Decay (Verfall), Trumpets (Trompeten), Winter Twilight (Winterdammerung), Night (Nacht), and Surrender to the Night (Nachtergebung).
“Trakl's poetry often carries autobiographical elements. His works reflect the somber, turbulent and maddening world during and after World War I and the struggles of a fragile individual within such a world, leading to despair and defeat. This struggle and sense of loss profoundly inspired me," he noted.
In the concerto, the cello represents the individual, endlessly battling the orchestra, which symbolizes the world, he said. In the fourth movement, Night, this individual dances with the maddened and chaotic world before ultimately surrendering to the night -- a metaphor for death or despair -- in the final movement.
This was not the first time Shin drew inspiration from literature.
Shin's "Kafka’s Dream," first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Francois-Xavier Roth in 2019, was inspired by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’s essay about Kafka.
"As a child, I dreamed of becoming a novelist. Literature and music share similarities in that they exist linearly over time. However, I want to emphasize that literature serves as inspiration but ultimately, composing is about working with sound, rhythm and harmony," Shin said.
"Recently, I have revisited classics I read in my youth, this time in their original language or English translations. I’ve re-read Thomas Mann’s 'Buddenbrooks,' George Eliot’s 'Middlemarch,' and am currently revisiting Tolstoy’s 'War and Peace.'"
On the musical side, Shin picked Mahler and Alban Berg as his first musical loves.
“Since my 30s, I have learned tremendously from Bach’s music, and lately, I have been deeply immersed in the works of Schumann and Schubert,” Shin said. He also acknowledged the impact of his mentor, Chin, whose emphasis on staying true to one’s artistic vision has become a cornerstone of his approach to composition.
"The interplay of harmony and counterpoint and the meticulous construction of musical materials -- all serve as vehicles for expressing myself. These are lessons I have learned from the great composers who preceded me," he added.
MOST POPULAR