Unsuk Chin - Graffiti (2013)

One of many brilliant showcases of Unsuk Chin's mastery of orchestral color
00:00 1 - PALIMPSEST. Orchestral sounds slowly emerge: waves of pizzicatos, mallet percussion, glowing harmonic swells, furtive string runs in tight canon, ...
02:19 A kaleidoscope of styles is built: a haunting string chorale, (2:50) mixing with agitated woodwinds. (3:20) Frantic rapid articulations (4:07) A hushed mini-nocturne (5:14) A jagged quasi-dance (6:14) The chorale mixed with violent orchestral flashes (7:38)
08:01 A highly rhythmic conclusion, gradually growing more violent, before falling away into a wash of thin timbres and breath noise
09:53 2 - NOTTURNO URBANO. Distant bells draw near. Eerie yet warm woodwind multiphonics and micropolyphony (13:09)
14:50 A sense of urgency as strings and woodwinds play frantic rapid tremolos, climaxing in a...
15:24 ...a roaring brass cluster. The sound softens until a beautifully warm Gmaj7/11 chord (15:57), and a return to the bells of the beginning of the movement
17:04 3 - PASSACAGLIA. A whimsical brass passacaglia anchors the movement. Continuous "flitting interjections of different instruments, which are highly varied in character and length"

Composer: Unsuk Chin (진은숙 Chin Unsuk) (July 14, 1961 –)
Orchestra: Ensemble Musikfabrik conducted by Peter Rundel

Score available from Boosey and Hawkes: https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Unsuk...
Unsuk Chin playlist:    • Unsuk Chin - Piano Concerto (1997)  

Most of us, when confronted with the term "graffiti," are likely to associate it with the rather desolate wall scrawlings all over our urban landscapes. However, this is not the whole picture: graffiti is an age-old form of artistic expression, which – unexpectedly, and without ever attempting to be "high art" – can be very creative. No less artists than Klee, Miró, Dubuffet, and Picasso were interested in it (the latter painting examples himself on Parisian walls). In our time, there is the highly interesting and controversial phenomenon of Street Art, which has occasionally wittily succeeded in criticizing the commercialization and uniformization of cities. At their best, street artists have been able to thwart the expectations created by omnipresent mass media and by advertising – one can find some particularly remarkable examples in metropolises such as Berlin, Paris, or New York.

Though this was the initial stimulus for Graffiti, it finally branched into rather different directions: it is only very loosely, if at all, connected to the phenomenon of Street Art (or to the visual arts). The music is not illustrative nor is it programmatic; what remained from the initial creative nucleus is little more than the title and the dialectic between primitivism and refinement, which captured my attention in some noteworthy examples of Street Art. My main idea, at the end, was to compose a music which is not restricted as to time or place, and which offers strong contrasts between different modes of expression.

The movements' headings give a hint of the changing modes, moods, and structures of the music. The first movement, "Palimpsest," is polydimensional and many-layered; one can hear allusions to a multiplicity of styles, which have been taken from their original context and juxtaposed in a kaleidoscopic manner.

The second movement, "Notturno urbano," forms a strong contrast to the hyperactive previous movement. It starts with distant and gradually approaching bell-like sounds, from which the whole movement's musical material is being derived: from their resonance simple intervallic relations emerge, which are being overwhelmed by more and more instruments. As a result, the music oscillates between simplicity and highly complex micropolyphony. The instruments are often used in an unconventional way: the winds as well as the strings employ extended techniques, which contributes to the aloofness and the mysteriousness of the movement.

The third, highly virtuosic, movement, is a kind of an "urban passacaglia" (the name of this musical form actually derives from the Spanish "pasar una calle" (to walk along a street). Formally, the passacaglia plays a central role throughout the movement. It consists of eight incisive chords, which are played continuously by the brass, albeit always in a different way. Two worlds collide in this movement: the brass attacks are commented upon by flitting interjections of different instruments, which are highly varied in character and length. These fragmentary comments are constantly interrupted by the brass passacaglia.

As a whole, the musical language of Graffiti shifts between roughness and refinement, complexity and transparency. It is rich in contrast and labyrinthine, neither tonal nor atonal. Graffiti calls for great agility, virtuosity, and constant changes of perspective from the musicians; each instrument is being treated as a soloist.

— Unsuk Chin