LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sofia Gubaidulina: Composers
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When she improvised on the instrument, Gubaidulina became entranced with its distinctive properties. Having employed a single waterphone at the conclusion of St. John Easter, she incorporated two of them, with an ensemble of seven cellos, into the score of On the Edge of the Abyss. This was a 60th-birthday gift for her friend Viktor Suslin, a composer and fellow founding member of the Astreya ensemble. The two of them played the waterphones in the first performance.
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Throughout Offertorium , Gubaidulina draws on a fantastic – at times grotesque – orchestral fabric, evocative of her national roots. Like her Russian predecessor Tchaikovsky, she exploits the full capabilities of the orchestra: harmonics, glissandos, and extended instrumental techniques co-exist with a large orchestra including a full raft of percussion: piano, marimba, gong, celesta (an instrument first used by the earlier composer in his ballet Nutcracker.) She rebuilds the theme in the last section with an elegiac, sweeping string chorale, ending with an orchestral shimmer created from each section divided into 12 parts. Just before presenting the last full statement of the theme, the solo violin returns to the trill with which it began; the “conversion” of the theme is then both a return and a departure – both times achingly lonely. What better way to portray the conversion experience?
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Gubaidulina's skill at orchestral writing is on full display here. She, like the other two Russian composers mentioned uses silence as an instrument independent of the orchestra, and judicious application of the brass and woodwind instruments leads to greater effectiveness and impact when they are used in full force.
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