In 1989, the Holland Festival placed composers from the Soviet Union at the centre. The music of Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidoelina hit like a bomb. The ladies turned out to be here to stay, although they move at two extremes of our sound perception. Ustvolskaya pounds her message into our eardrums with monomaniacal drive, Gubaidoelina intoxicates us with mysterious rustles and whispers. For me, they are among the most interesting post-World War II composers. On Thursday 1 October, they take centre stage at the opening of the 'Thursday evening series' at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ.
Reinbert de Leeuw leads the Asko|Schönberg in Concordanza, that Sofia Gubaidoelina composed in 1971. It is full of lyrical, swirling swirls of winds and strings. In the middle movement, a double bass enters into a compelling duet with a flageolette melody by the violin; its ingenuity in devising unheard sounds is seemingly endless. Also in Concordanza the Tatar-Russian sound sorceress weaves intense stillness and expressively-dissonant sonic nuances into a colourful tapestry of sound that keeps me nailed to my chair from start to finish.
Ear-splitting fortissimi
Although totally different in sound, the Fifth piano sonata by her 13-year-old colleague also has Galina Ustvolskaya an enormous eloquence. Because of her often oorsplitting fortissimi, she has been called 'the woman with the hammer'. Like all her music, the sonata consists largely of quarter notes at a slow tempo and there are huge dynamic differences. Simple two-note melodic motifs alternate with heavily dissonant clusters, with the pianist pounding on several keys simultaneously with the flat of his hand. This monumental hammering is interspersed with pianissimo sound strings, which, however, are by no means pleasing: they force intense listening.
Galina Ustvolskaya lived as a recluse in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), but was roped in by Reinbert de Leeuw and Cherry Duyns in 1994 for a documentary in the series Tone Masters. I was studying musicology at the time and was struck by the boned, unrelenting power of her music. When she suddenly turned up at the Concertgebouw a year later at the premiere of her Third Symphony, I immediately approached her and persuaded her to an interview. At the appointed time, however, it sounded implacable: 'Ich sage nichts!' Thanks to her publisher, I still managed to elicit a few statements from her and the publication in Vrij Nederland marked my breakthrough as a music journalist. (I additionally translated the article for the British music magazine Pace and the German music magazine VivaVoce.)
Whispering and rustling
Such a thing creates a bond, and for me, a concert with Ustvolskaya's music is always an experience. The same goes for the work of Sofia Gubaidoelina, whose composition Now always snow gave me goosebumps from head to toe in 1993. The whispering, rustling and crackling of singers and musicians lined up around us hit the mark so strongly that even days later I felt tingling at the memory. I have since interviewed Gubaidoelina many times, for written articles, reports on Radio 4, at the celebration of her 80th birthday and for my biography of Reinbert de Leeuw. - That I ever embarked on this monkish task at all is largely rooted in my admiration for these two powerladies, whose music I got to know thanks to him.
The concert next Thursday is particularly interesting for me because Dutch composer Astrid Kruisselbrink composed a new work for it, Die Klage um Linos, after Rainer Maria Rilke's elegy of the same name. Like Gubaidoelina, Kruisselbrink has a strong sense of timbre and knows how to let space and silence speak for themselves musically. With Kurtág, who will also perform a piece, she shares the ability to make a voice stammer penetratingly. As, for instance, in the wonderful song cycle Breathe for mezzo-soprano, flute and piano from 2004.
Curious to see how Kruisselbrink holds up against the three Eastern European grandmasters.
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