The poems of Georg Trakl have proved rich source material for composers: Anton Webern, Paul Hindemith, Peter Maxwell Davies and Thea Musgrave have all been drawn to the Austrian expressionist’s rich, macabre imagery. Donghoon Shin, who often looks to literature for inspiration, is the latest. In his cello concerto Nachtergebung, commissioned by the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, he takes one of Trakl’s poems as the starting point for each of its five movements, crafting a succession of (primarily) night-time portraits. Like the poems, these sinister nocturnes are an expression of a more general foreboding – in Shin’s words, ‘a contemplation on the madness around the world, as the kind soul struggles with cruel reality’.
As with much of Shin’s music, Nachtergebung is concise and crystalline. His palette is characteristically imaginative. In ‘Verfall’ (Decay), for example, he instructs the percussionist to bow crotales (small brass or bronze cymbals) positioned atop a timpani’s drumhead, while at the same time pedaling that timpani. This conjures an otherworldly siren – presumably Trakl’s blackbird, ‘wailing in the denuded branches’. Other combinations produce similarly programmatic effects: in ‘Trompeten’ (Trumpets), sandpaper blocks and ‘col legno battuto’ violins (struck with the wood of the bow) hint at scuttering leaves. Ice-cold violin harmonics and wire-brushed cymbals in ‘Winterdämmerung’ (Winter Twilight) point upwards to ‘black skies of metal’, bringing Trakl’s chilling vision of war to life. When Shin deploys the full weight of the orchestra the affect is equally potent. The manic ‘Die Nacht’, with its brassy fanfares and duelling percussion, feels intrusive, bursting at the seams, like the warmongering horsemen that break the rural idyll of Trakl’s poem (which, written in 1912, was eerily prescient of World War I). When a sustained tutti (all together) chord appears suddenly in the ‘lullaby’ finale, it’s as if the orchestra is letting out a deep, despondent sign.
However, the main emotional weight is carried by the solo cello, which guides us through Shin’s nightscape. Lyrical passages build to great climaxes, punctuated with furious stabs and screeching double stops, most affectingly in Winter Twilight, ‘Winterdämmerung’, the beating heart of the work. At its most expressive, Nachtergebung is reminiscent of Edward Elgar’s grief-stricken Cello Concerto, and more than once the solo part hints – deliberately or not – at those famous opening chords. That was the last major orchestral work Elgar completed. Shin, a composer only just into his 40s, has much more yet to give. All the better for us.
Donghoon Shin
Donghoon Shin’s musical trajectory was, as he admits, unlikely. Born in South Korea, he grew up listening to classical, jazz and pop, and played synthesizer in a rock ‘n’ roll band. But there was little access to avant-garde music. It was an encounter with György Ligeti’s Piano Concerto that inspired a shift in that direction: he enrolled at the Seoul National University to study composition and was soon taken under the wing of Unsuk Chin, ‘an important mentor’ – and one of Ligeti’s disciples. After moving to London in 2014 to study with Julian Anderson and Sir George Benjamin, Shin began accruing awards from bodies such as the Royal Philharmonic Society, and commissions from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others.
Shin’s music is colourful and controlled, every sound loaded with meaning. He tends to deal in melodic gestures rather than fullblown melody but, when he does let rip, his music has the emotional charge of two of his great heroes: Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg. He is often inspired by literature: Kafka’s Dream (2018–19) is an ode to writer Jorge Luis Borges (‘Through [his] works I’ve learnt how to mix and juxtapose disparate things to create new meaning’); in Upon His Ghostly Solitude (2023) he took the cyclical concept of W B Yeats’ poem Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen and applied it to the work’s harmonic structure.
For a long time Shin avoided musical references to his heritage, not wanting to be confined as an ‘Asian composer’, though latterly he has dabbled in that direction, with concertos for the Chinese wind instrument, the sheng (Anecdote, 2018–19) and sheng with accordion (Double Act, 2022). More authentic glimpses of his Seoul childhood might be found in the jazz rhythms and harmonies that colour works such as Songs and Games (2018), a boogie-woogie daydream for solo piano. Close your eyes and you’ll see the young Shin, dancing to his dad’s record collection.
Read the full programme note and profile on the London Symphony Orchestra website