subito con forza

Unsuk Chin’s compact concert-opener, which has rapidly become her most performed work, takes its name from the frequent Beethoven marking in his scores, meaning ‘suddenly with power’. 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 recognisable 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 to me are the enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme serenity. It profoundly and poignantly speaks of something fundamental about the human condition.”

“Unsuk Chin’s subito con forza, a brief five-minute curtain-raiser written for the 2020 Beethoven anniversary year, takes a gesture from the composer’s “Coriolan” Overture and dances it around through a series of oratorical pronouncements and clattery percussion.”
San Francisco Chronicle

"...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 Guardian

“Effective and eerie, with plenty happening in five teeming minutes. Chin’s ear for colour is her greatest weapon.”
The Times

“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.”
iNews