Sofia Gubaidulina’s music has one characteristic that ought to make it
difficult to play: its ‘voice’, the style in which she has chosen to wrap
her various ‘messages’ of dismay, faith, exultation and despair. These defy
assignment to a particular type or particular musical design. The composer
has a rare gift of writing music of whose melodic and harmonic world as well
as instrumental texture you are aware before you decide whether it is tonal,
atonal, spectral or minimalist.
Inexperienced players run the risk of allowing their experience of ‘types’
of music to interfere with the more direct communication which is central to
Gubaidulina’s ‘message’. They feel the need to set off in a certain
direction, to predispose themselves to follow a certain playing style.
That doesn’t happen here. This CD is a collection, recorded last year, of
Gubaidulina’s solo and chamber music. It’s a genre which is as important to
her as her larger scale searing and imposing symphonic and choral works. All
six players here achieve a commendable focus; they shine light of just the
right intensity into and onto those ‘meanings’ possessed by the composer’s
music. Technically successful, none here allows interpretation to obscure
the music itself. This is just as Gubaidulina speaks straight to our ears
with little or no intervening ‘business’.
The guitar features prominently. Some of the music on this CD is redolent,
for instance, of a Spanish languor from the latter part of the last century
- like the
Serenade [tr.2] which was indeed written in 1960. Other
pieces contrast, having a heavy, almost jazzy, syncopation; the
Piano
Sonata [trs. 3-5] from five years later, for example. Indeed,
Gubaidulina often has a non-musical element that informs a work’s
reception.
This can be - as above - an implied reference to another musical world, a
text, or a near obsessive — in the good sense in which it worked for the
likes of Elliott Carter — adherence to a musical figure, gesture or
tonality. It may even be an allusion to the circumstances under which the
composer had worked. An example is ‘Repentance’ [tr.1] because she regretted
having to put off this commission for a cello work for Ivan Monighetti for
so long. In recompense, perhaps, even in such a small-scale work, the cello
is treated as a soloist to the other instrument's accompaniment.
The performers must achieve the right balance. On the one hand they must
not allow such factors to submerge the present texture. On the other the
intended, rhythm or sound must be clear and bring to fruition the very same
precisely-wrought aspects of the music. That’s not easy. Yet the performers
here expose Gubaidulina’s music for what it is. It’s neither pastiche nor
approximation. The result is a sense of great respect on the
listener's part.
Pace, tempo, nuance of texture, the relative dynamics afforded to
instruments not usually combined ... all work to direct our attention. They
affect what happens in our ‘mind’s ear’ immediately after a piece has
finished. They direct us to what Gubaidulina really wrote and intended; not
a distillation of what we may be used to as listeners bombarded with so many
sound-worlds.
Sotto Voce [tr.6] for viola, double bass and two guitars is the
most recent work (2010/2013) and in some ways sums up all these qualities of
Gubaidulina’s work. It hints and suggests in the way that perhaps comparable
works for cello — John Tavener’s or Schnittke’s — do not. It opposes
melodiousness and curvature in favour of sparseness. It seems to have
already explored the relationships between abstract musical idea and
instrumental texture before Gubaidulina’s ink was dry, or her composition
file saved. For the five musicians to have assembled the whole so
convincingly is almost worth the price of the CD alone. That said, Débora
Halász plays the piano in the Sonata just as compellingly.
The acoustic is close and sympathetic to the instruments’ combinations and
characteristics. The booklet supplied by BIS makes a useful introduction to
this aspect of the composer’s work. If you are intrigued by Gubaidulina
and/or wish to keep up with this area of her activity, this is a haunting CD
that will satisfy as much as it will enthral.
Mark Sealey
Previous review:
Dan Morgan
