Galina Ustvolskaya
2 products
Ustvolskaya: Clarinet Trio - Piano Sonata No. 5 - Duet
Hat Hut Records
Available as
CD
Ustvolskaya's music is dark, somber, even remote when a solitary voice holds sway. Her rejection of easily recognizable form suggests that, metaphorically, time is not a factor; as temporal references are acutely literai, the means to escape an oppressive time and place are found in spiritual, not social, values. Similarly, the chilling sparseness of textures becomes an emotionallandscape, scarred, sometimes painfully severe, where inner strength is necessary for survival. But there is, too, especially in the Duet For Violin And Piano, a sanctity of mood (shared with the later Shostakovich, when he was obsessed with death, and where, in his final works such as the Viola Sonata and Sonata For Violin And Piano, the influence of Ustvolskaya may be felt). ln moments like this, rare is the music where the human will is so immediate, so enduring.
Ustvolskaya: Symphony No. 5, Octet, Etc; Shostakovich: Piano Quintet / Stott
Conifer Records
Available as
CD
$17.99
Jun 20, 2008
'It is not you who are under my influence, but I who am under yours,' wrote Shostakovich to Ustvolskaya. Certainly, though their music shares sorrow, grotesquerie and violence, Ustvolskaya has a vision all her own. The Octet appears to be an obsessive rite; violins worry over the same narrow range of notes, and cower before the relentless timpanic beating. Leiferkus’s speaking voice provides the only real music in the arid Symphony. Welcome to the Gulag. Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, spare as it is, arrives like a shower of delightful opulence.
-- Helen Wallace, BBC Music Magazine
-- Helen Wallace, BBC Music Magazine
