Music and science come together at the gala concert in Euskalduna Bilbao honoring laureates in the 18th edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

The 18th Frontiers Awards have gone to Allan MacDonald and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero in Basic Sciences; Carl June and Michel Sadelain in Biology and Biomedicine; Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen in Information and Communication Technologies; Carl Wunsch in Climate Change and Environmental Sciences; Charles Manski in Economics, Finance and Management; Nancy Cartywright in Humanities; The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and NORC at the University of Chicago in Social Sciences; and South Korean composer Unsuk Chin in Music and Opera.

The Basque National Orchestra, led by Lucas Macías, offered a two-part program. Part one consisted of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C major, followed by the Cello Concerto in four movements of this year’s awardee composer Unsuk Chin, with German cellist Alban Gerhardt as soloist. In part two, the orchestra opened with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, with Christian Zacharias on solo piano, continuing with composer Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite.

Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, divided into four movements, was conceived as a struggle between two competing forces: the soloist on one side, and the orchestra on the other. Chin wrote the piece thinking of the cellist Alban Gerhardt, to whom it is dedicated and who has performed it on multiple occasions.

A personal voice that has achieved global resonance in contemporary music

Unsuk Chin received the award for cultivating a “personal voice,” in the words of the committee, that has resonated widely in the contemporary music world. Her “formidable technique” – the citation continued – “creates ever-shifting landscapes where color and texture play a central role,” birthing an aesthetic that is “without parallel in today’s music scene.” The committee reserved mention for the fact that Chin’s musical approach draws on “philosophical and scientific concepts,” as well as “surrealist literature and the visual arts.”

But the road she had to travel to pursue music and find that voice was a far from easy one. When Unsuk Chin’s father, a Presbyterian minister, bought a piano for his church, she taught herself to play on it, as her family lacked the means to pay for lessons. Later, at the suggestion of a high school music teacher, she turned to composition. In 1985 she received an exchange scholarship from the German government, and the Hungarian composer György Ligeti took her on as a student. The composer has lived in Germany ever since.

The committee describe Chin as possessed of an unmistakable aesthetic within the contemporary music field, “rich in references to the fantastical,” but also to science, art, and literature. She admits that when writing she enters a trance-like state, which starts with the first note and continues uninterrupted to the last. Known for pushing her performers to the limit in her solo concertos, she is adamant that, just as she strives to surpass her own limits, she expects a similar effort from the musicians – exacting standards that trace back to her training under Ligeti. Unsuk Chin continues to pursue her own voice, a goal instilled in her by her mentor.

Unsuk Chin

Unsuk Chin (Seoul, South Korea, 1961) studied composition under Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University. In 1985, her graduation project – Spektra for three celli – won the international composers competition organized by the Amsterdam-based Gaudeamus Foundation. That same year she received a grant enabling her to move to Germany, where for three years she studied with György Ligeti at Hamburg’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater. In 1989 she began working as a freelance composer at the Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University of Berlin, the city she would make her home. Chin has composed more than fifty works in virtually every genre, which quickly attracted the interest of international ensembles and organizations. In 1992, the Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain selected her to write Fantaisie mécanique, the first of six works commissioned by this prestigious ensemble. Also from this decade are her ParaMetaString, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and Miroirs des temps, commissioned by the BBC for The Hilliard Ensemble and London Philharmonic Orchestra, joined in time by other pieces commissioned by London’s Southbank Centre, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Los Angeles Opera.

From 2006 and 2017, Chin was composer-in-residence with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, founding and overseeing its contemporary music series. In 2010, Esa-Pekka Salonen announced her as Artistic Director of the London Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series in London, a position she held for nine seasons. A number of contemporary music festivals have featured her music, including MITO Settembre Musica in Italy, the Musica Festival in Strasbourg, France, MADE Festival in Sweden, the festival of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, United Kingdom, and the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland. Her music has been conducted – and in many cases premiered – by maestros of the stature of Kent Nagano, Sir Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

Basque National Orchestra

Promoted by the Basque Government Department of Culture, the Basque National Orchestra was founded in 1982 and is currently one of the country’s foremost symphonic ensembles. Its origins lay in a project entrusted to the then Music Director of the Department of Culture, Imanol Olaizola, and it has remained strongly rooted in the community of its birth. An orchestra of its time, it stands out for its exacting standards and its determination to showcase symphonic music from every period, while placing special emphasis on the creation and dissemination of Basque music within its borders and beyond.

Since Enrique Jordá took up the baton of the new formation as artistic advisor and guided its first steps, different conductors have played their part in nurturing the quality and reach of the Basque orchestra. Robert Treviño, Jun Märkl, Andrey Boreyko (as Principal Guest Conductor), Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Gilbert Varga and Cristian Mandeal, Mario Venzago, Hans Graf, Miguel Ángel Gómez Martínez, Matthias Kuntzsch, Maximiano Valdés and Jordá himself, later named its honorary conductor, have stewarded the orchestra in its rising trajectory.

Lucas Macías

Lucas Macías Navarro studied at the Zurich Conservatory (Switzerland) under Thomas Indermühle. As a member of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra, he continued his training at the Freiburg Conservatory (Germany) from 1997 to 2000, where he earned the Soloist Diploma in Heinz Holliger’s class. Throughout his career, he has performed as a soloist at renowned international festivals and events, including the Berliner Festwochen, the Europäischen Musikmonat (Basel, Switzerland), the ARD Kammermusikfest 2003 (Munich), the Albert-Konzerten in Freiburg (Germany) and the BBC Proms (London). In addition, he studied at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2003 and 2004. Principal Oboist with the Munich Chamber Orchestra (Germany) since March 2004, as of July 2025 he combines his role there with that of Principal Oboist with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland).

In 2014, Macías Navarro began his conducting career with an acclaimed debut at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, adding to his fame as one of the world’s leading oboists. In 2018, he was appointed Music Director of the Oviedo Philharmonic Orchestra. His debut at the Oviedo Opera took place in October 2021 with a production of The Magic Flute. He has worked with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Orchestre de Paris (where he served as Assistant Conductor for two years, working closely with Daniel Harding), the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Het Gelders Orkest, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, and the Basque National Orchestra, among other prestigious ensembles. In September 2020, he was appointed conductor of the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada.

About the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

The BBVA Foundation centers its activity on the promotion of world-class scientific research and cultural creation and their transmission to society, along with the recognition of talent through families of awards organized alone or in conjunction with scientific societies and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards recognize and reward contributions of singular impact in basic sciences, biomedicine, environmental sciences and climate change, information and communication technologies, social sciences, economics, the humanities and music. Since their launch in 2008, the goal of the awards has been to celebrate and promote the value of knowledge as a public good without frontiers, of benefit to all humanity; the best instrument at our command to expand our individual worldviews while collectively engaging with the great challenges of our time. Their eight categories are congruent with the knowledge map of the 21st century.

The Foundation is partnered in this family of awards by the country’s foremost public research organization, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), which appoints evaluation support panels made up of leading experts in the corresponding disciplinary domain, who are charged with undertaking an initial assessment of candidates and drawing up a reasoned shortlist for the consideration of the award committees. The Council also designates the chairperson of the eight committees deciding the eight award categories and collaborates in the election of their members, thus helping to ensure objectivity in the recognition of musical and scientific excellence. The CSIC president, finally, has a prominent role in the award presentation ceremony that takes place yearly in Bilbao, the permanent home of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.