Rafael Payare, conductor
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
San Diego Symphony Orchestra
UNSUK CHIN: Cello Concerto
BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E Major
South Korean composer Unsuk Chin has spent most of her working life in Germany where, as a young artist in Berlin, she absorbed many of the acoustic enthusiasms of European modernists in the late 20th century while swiftly building a distinctive language of her own. Her cello concerto, widely described as a triumph at its first appearance many years ago, has been taken up by many cellists and most recently by our own Alisa Weilerstein. Weilerstein’s mastery of drama and plangent lyricism is the perfect match for Unsuk Chin’s defiant and expressive music.
Bruckner is one of the greatest one-offs in the history of music. The heir to Schubert and Wagner (but to hardly any other of the great composers!), he had a deep influence on Gustav Mahler, who loved and admired him passionately. But perhaps his deepest roots lay in the folk-music of the Austrian countryside where he grew up, and in the church music of centuries ago. He himself was an organist and church musician of great distinction, but – more than that – a man of deep religious feelings, and his music vividly reflects that. The Seventh, one of his later symphonies, often makes the orchestra sound like a colossal organ in an ancient medieval church. Indeed, this symphony has often been described as nothing short of a cathedral in sound. It would be hard to imagine music better suited to exploring the deepest resonances of our beautiful new hall, especially under the baton of music director Rafael Payare.