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Sofia Gubaidulina: Works
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Sofia Gubaidulina might have been the envy of many a contemporary composer when two of her new works were performed in New York City on the same day in 1999. On April 29 the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Kurt Masur premiered Two Paths, a work for two violas and orchestra commissioned by the conductor's wife, violist Tomoko. The two solo instruments, …
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Russian composer, Sofia Gubaidulina (1931) has achieved international acclaim for her unique musical oeuvre which draws on Eastern and Western musical traditions and reflects a deep-rooted belief in the mystical and religious qualities of music. Kurtz's biography of Gubaidulina is the first in any language. Based on her papers and extensive interviews with Gubaidulina, her colleagues, and family, the book places her life and the evolution of her work within the broader cultural and political context of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. For the English edition, the text has been revised and updated and a chronology of Gubaidulina's life and a complete list of her works have been added.
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Soviet Republic in 1931 and grew up in Kazan, at the crossroads, as she once said, of many diverse cultures within the Russian empire. Kazan, an area proportionately rich in craftsmen and artists, was spiritually rich, too. Gubaidulina's own family background embraced Jews and Muslims as well as Christians of Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic persuasions. One of Gubaidulina's earliest musical memories is of her grandmother chanting Islamic prayers. She has said that she considers herself "a daughter of two worlds, whose soul lives in the music of the East and the West". Her personal commitment to the Russian Orthodox faith has not rendered her unmindful of the insights of other religious perspectives. And as with other major composers from the former Soviet Union - from Arvo Pärt to Galina Ustvolskaya - the religious impulse is closely intertwined in her work with the artistic impulse, and one can hardly be discussed in isolation from the other.
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The Russian-Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina is known for her idiosyncratically spiritual music. Yet there was nothing at all religious about "Feast During a Plague," a cacophonous and menacing piece that sounded profane through and through. Fleeting melodies, chilling harmonies, and unexpected orchestral couplings combine in a sinister work with starkly alternating textures. Jaunty and Charivariesque, it is a thoroughly wicked display of theatrical dissonance and experimentation: basses snapped back their strings while harps provided inconstant solace; cutthroat violins played with ironic glissando and twined in and out like a phonograph. The thoroughly engaging work is full of nightmarish arpeggios, cackling trumpets, and wailing horns, often building to moments of incredible tension. Thrilling in its dramatic force, the work seemed almost like a modern-day "Sacr
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Since 1985, when she was first allowed to travel to the West, Gubaidulina's stature in the world of contemporary music has skyrocketed. She has been the recipient of prestigious commissions from the Berlin, Helsinki, and Holland Festivals, the Library of Congress, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and many other organizations and ensembles. The major triumph of the recent past was the premiere in 2002 of the monumental two-part cycle, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to St. John, commissioned respectively by the International Bachakademie Stuttgart and the Norddeutschen Rundfunk, Hamburg. Gubaidulina made her first visit to North America in 1987 as a guest of Louisville's "Sound Celebration." She has returned many times since as a featured composer of festivals — Boston's "Making Music Together" (1988), Vancouver's "New Music" (1991), Tanglewood (1997) — and for other performance milestones. From the retrospective concert by Continuum (New York, 1989) to the world premieres of commissioned works — Pro et Contra by the Louisville Orchestra (1989), String Quartet No. 4 by the Kronos Quartet (New York, 1994), Dancer on a Tightrope by Robert Mann and Ursula Oppens (Washington, DC, 1994), the Viola Concerto by Yuri Bashmet with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Kent Nagano (1997), Two Paths ("A Dedication to Mary and Martha") for two solo violas and orchestra, by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Masur (1999), and Light of the End by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Masur (2003) — the accolades of American critics have been ecstatic. Eagerly anticipated for 2006 is the premiere of a new orchestral work, Feast During a Plague, jointly commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted in Philadelphia by Sir Simon Rattle and in Pittsburgh by Sir Andrew Davis.
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SOFIA ASGATOVNA GUBAIDULINA was born on October 24, 1931, in Christopol in the Tatar Autonomous Republic in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and now lives in a village—she prefers to keep it unidentified—outside Hamburg, Germany. She composed Offertorium in 1980. The work was intended for Gidon Kremer, but in the event the first performance, in 1982, was given by Oleg Kagan with Gennady Rozhdestvensky on the podium. Kremer was the soloist in the first American performance, given in 1985 with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic. These are the first performances at San Francisco Symphony concerts. The orchestra consists of two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets and E-flat clarinet, two bassoons, three horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, celesta, two harps, piano, timpani, wood block, crotales, bass drum, chimes, guiro, triangle, suspended cymbals, glockenspiel, bongos, tam-tam, xylophone, slapstick, marimbaphone, temple block, snare drum, and strings.
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