LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sofia Gubaidulina
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic in 1931. She studied the piano (with Grigory Kogan) and composition, and graduated from the Kazan Conservatory in 1954. Until 1959 she studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Nikolai Peiko, Shostakovich’s assistant, and then did postgraduate work under Vissarion Shebalin. She has been active as a composer since 1963. In 1975, together with Viktor Suslin and Vyacheslav Artyomov, she founded the ‘Astreya’ Ensemble, which specialized in improvising on rare Russian, Caucasian, Central Asian and East Asian folk and ritual instruments. These hitherto unknown sounds and timbres and ways of experiencing musical time had a profound influence on her creative work.
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol’ in the Tatar Soviet Republic in 1931. She studied the piano at the Music Academy in Kazan after the war. In 1949 she entered the Kazan Conservatory where she studied composition with Leman and subsequently with Nikolay Peyko, a pupil of Myaskovsky and Rakov. She continued her studies with Vissarion Shebalin, another pupil of Myaskovsky. She had encouragement from Dmitry Shostakovich, who advised her to ignore hostile criticism from the official musical establishment, and earned a living in Russia principally by writing film music, though, at the same time, her works were widely heard abroad. With the political changes in the Soviet Union towards the late 1980s, she was able to travel outside the country, and since 1992 she has been living in a small town near Hamburg, Germany.
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Seitdem ist Gubaidulina als freischaffende Komponistin tätig und zählt neben Schnittke, Denissow und Silwestrow zu den führenden Vertretern der „Neuen Musik“ in Russland. So gelangten ihre Werke mit Beginn der achtziger Jahre – insbesondere dank des tatkräftigen Einsatzes von Gidon Kremer – rasch in die westlichen Konzertprogramme. Dies bekunden die vielen Aufträge namhafter Institutionen (darunter BBC, Berliner Festwochen, Library of Congress, NHK, The New York Philharmonic) sowie die stattliche Zahl der CD-Einspielungen.
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Gubaidulina is a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin and the Freie Akademie der Kunste in Hamburg, among other associations. Also, she has been awarded the Prix de Monaco (1987), the Koussevitsky International Record Award (1989; 1994), the Premio Franco Abbiato (1991), the Heidelberger Kunstlerinnenpreis (1991), the Russian State Prize (1992), the SpohrPreis (1995), the Praemium Imperiale (1998) and the Sonning Prize (1999), among others.
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Within this structure, Gubaidulina opens up an entire soundscape for the violinist to move around in. The theme begins on a solo trombone – a nod to Webern? – but is immediately picked up by a succession of solo winds. The entrance of the violin, with its trill and repeated semi-tone, “stabs” the theme and leads into the first variation. The theme is progressively shortened and the variations based on shorter fragments, losing the sense of thematic coherence and creating a somewhat obsessive quality. As the piece unfolds into the second section, both soloist and orchestra make excursions based on thematic fragments; occasionally the soundscape recedes for extended violin cadenzas. Only in the last full statement of the theme on solo violin does the listener regain any stability.
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Within such a context... Gubaidulina's stylistic range remains considerable. She is often at her most striking when she avoids grand, convulsive orchestral gestures in favour of small, intimate groupings. Her Third String Quartet, performed by the Royal Quartet, is a parable of creation, both artistic and divine, in which inchoate pizzicatos gradually give way to surging lyricism. Introitus, for piano and chamber ensemble, beautifully played by Nicholas Hodges with Mikhail Agrest conducting the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, builds inexorably in anticipation of some spiritual revelation that remains tantalisingly withheld.
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Sofia Gubaidulina