Donghoon Shin Channels Yeats In New Piece For LA Philharmonic

On April 7-8, Donghoon Shin's orchestral work Upon His Ghostly Solitude receives its world premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by longtime champion Osmo Vänskä. The work was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and Bamberg Symphony.

The 17-minute orchestral work inspired by WB Yeats's "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," a poem that meditates on the cyclical nature of history. The cyclical concept evoked a strong musical structure for Shin, who introduces a four-chord harmonic theme (he calls it the "core engine" of the piece) that reappears in each movement in altered versions of itself. He ties this to a line in the poem: "Whirls out new right and wrong / Whirls in the old instead." Another line-"All men are dancers and their tread goes to the barbarous clangour of gong"-moved Shin to compose a march (inspired by Berg and Mahler) in the final movement, building to a climax that is cut off by the violent sound of a "barbarous gong."

Passionate about literature and poetry from a young age, Shin first encountered Yeats's poem as a teenager in Seoul. Unable to fully understand the untranslated poetry at that time, he recalls the text nevertheless made a deep impression on him. Years later, he came across the poem again during the pandemic, and was surprised by how similar today's world felt to the one described by Yeats a hundred years prior. Shin states, "I felt like it was fate, all these years later, that I would finally write a piece of music inspired by this poem."

"This piece is a love letter to Yeats and Berg, who suffered in the wounded world but tried to keep their voices and ideas intact even when everything 'falls apart, and the centre cannot hold'."

Shin also noticed similarities to Berg's music in Yeats's poetry: "I found more and more resemblances with Alban Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces, written around the same time (1915). Like Yeats's poem, that score also tries to depict the terror and the despair in the crippled world through Romantic, Expressionist gestures."

Shin, who has long admired and been influenced by the music of Alban Berg, explains, "This piece is a love letter to Yeats and Berg, who suffered in the wounded world but tried to keep their voices and ideas intact even when everything 'falls apart, and the centre cannot hold'."

Shin has a long history of working with Osmo Vänskä, who has previously conducted his music with the Minnesota Orchestra and Helsinki Philharmonic. Vänskä will also give the German premiere of Upon His Ghostly Solitude with the Bamberg Symphony on May 5-6. On December 21-22, Jaap van Zweden and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra will give the Asian premiere of the work.

Concert Info

Friday, April 7 at 8 PM PT

Saturday, April 8 at 8 PM PT

Walt Disney Concert Hall | Los Angeles, CA

More info

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Osmo Vänskä, conductor

Inon Barnatan, piano

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1

Donghoon SHIN Upon His Ghostly Solitude **WORLD PREMIERE**

SIBELIUS Symphony No. 3

About Donghoon Shin

Born in South Korea in 1983, Donghoon Shin studied composition at Seoul National University with Sukhi Kang and Uzong Choe. He moved to London in 2014, studying with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He currently combines his composing career with studies for a PhD in Composition supervised by Sir George Benjamin at King's College London.

In 2010 Donghoon Shin won the Gran Prix of the ANM-BBVA International Composition Concours, followed by the Goethe Award in 2013 from the Goethe Institut and Tongyeong International Music Festival. Major awards over the past decade include the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2016, a UK Critics' Circle Music Award for Young Talent in 2019, and the Claudio Abbado Prize in 2022. In 2017-18 he served as Young Composer in Residence with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group through Sound and Music's Embedded Scheme and in 2019 was selected as a composer laureate for three years by Ricordilab.

Donghoon Shin's music has been performed and commissioned by prominent orchestras, ensembles and festivals such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Spanish National Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Ensemble Recherche, Riot Ensemble, EXAUDI ensemble, Festival d'Automne à Paris and Tongyeong International Music Festival.

Recent works include Of Rats and Men (2019) for chamber orchestra, premiered by the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Peter Eötvös, with further performances in Grafenegg, Budapest and Seoul. Kafka's Dream (2018/19), inspired by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges's essay about Kafka, was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth, has traveled to Dresden and was toured internationally by the Seoul Philharmonic in autumn 2022.

2022 also saw the premieres of Shin's cello concerto Nachtergebung (Night Surrender) for Bruno Delepelaire and the Karajan Academy conducted by Kirill Petrenko in Berlin and of his double concerto for sheng, accordion and orchestra, Double Act, in Bochum with soloists Wu Wei and Pascal Contet. Osmo Vänskä conducts first performances of Shin's new orchestral work Upon His Ghostly Solitude in 2023 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, and its Asian premiere follows with the Seoul Philharmonic under the baton of Jaap van Zweden.

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