Unsuk Chin’s career (Seoul, South Korea, 1961) began with the piano her father, a Presbyterian minister, bought for the church where he preached. Chin was only two years old at the time. “Shortly after, I began learning to play on my own. My father could read sheet music and taught me a little, but I was basically self-taught until I started university. As a child, all I wanted was to become a pianist, but my family, like most families in South Korea in the sixties, was quite poor and couldn’t afford lessons,” the laureate recounts.
When she was 12, her music teacher at school suggested she try her hand at composition. “At the time, I had no idea what that involved, but I told myself it would be much cheaper than becoming a pianist,” she jokes.
Despite having to balance school with a job to help support her family, Chin managed to gain admission to Seoul National University. The composer recalls this period as a very difficult but also enriching time: “We were under a military dictatorship and faced very serious political problems.” However, it was there that she discovered Western contemporary music, which inspired her to pursue her career in Europe.
The difficult path to finding her own voice
In 1985, Chin received an exchange scholarship from the German government and moved to Hamburg, where the Hungarian composer György Ligeti took her on as a student. Working with Ligeti was not easy. “I found him quite intimidating. I studied with him for three years, and his lessons were very demanding. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. As a Jewish survivor of World War II, he hadn’t had an easy life, and part of his family had been murdered by the Nazis.” Despite everything, “studying with him was the best thing that could have happened to me in my entire life, because even today I continue to learn from his music and his teachings,” the award winner reflects.
After finishing her studies with Ligeti, she moved to Berlin, where she began working as a freelance composer at the Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University of Berlin. In the 1990s, Akrostichon-Wortspiel (“Acrostic-Wordplay,” 1991–93) marked the beginning of her international career. Since then, this piece has been performed by ensembles around the world.