大象传媒

Sofia Gubaidulina was among seven composers denounced by Tikhon Khrennikov, Secretary of the highly influential Union of Soviet Composers in 1979. Donald Macleod considers the circumstances surrounding this speech with Gerard McBurney.

To mark Sofia Gubaidulina鈥檚 ninetieth birthday, Donald Macleod and Gerard McBurney explore five different aspects of her progressive and distinctive music. Gubaidulina has been living in Germany since 1992 and is still busy composing today. When she was born in 1931 in Tatarstan, the Soviet Union was under Stalinist rule. Up until her emigration, she worked as a composer under the strictly regulated conditions determined by Soviet cultural policies. Across the week we get an insight into the life of a composer behind the Iron Curtain, as Gubaidulina developed her own creative path, un-swayed by any hint of ideological pressure.

Aside from Khrennikov's public explanation, the Communist Party had long regarded religious belief as superstitious and backward. The relationship between religion, the spiritual and her music may have been another reason to regard Gubaidulina in a negative light. But for Gubaidulina there would be "no weightier occupation than the re-composition of spiritual integrity through the composition of music.鈥�

Johannes Passion
I: The word
St. Petersburg Chamber Choir
Chorus & Orchestra of the Marinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg
Valery Gergiev, director

Rejoice! Sonata for Violin and Cello
V: Listen to the small voice within
Gidon Kremer, violin
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

Stimmen鈥�.. Verstummen (excerpt)
8th Movement (out of 12) 10鈥�36鈥�
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor

In Croce
Germano Scurti, bayan
Francesco Dillon, cello

Alleluja
Vjeruju (Credo)
Da ispolnjatsja usta maja: quarter note
Danish National Radio Choir
Copenhagen Boys鈥� Choir
Danish National RSO
Dmitri Kitayenko, conductor