The composer from the Tartar Republic of the former Soviet Union is a unique figure in contemporary music, and the first ECM album of her compositions underlines many of the strengths of her work, foremost among them a deep feeling for sound and texture. As a colourist, too, Gubaidulina has few equals, and the way in which she mixes “folk” and “concert” instruments – in this case the bayan (the Russian button accordion), the violoncello and strings – is exceptional. Tremendous performances by Elsbeth Moser, Boris Pergamenschikow and the Münchener Kammerorchester under Christoph Poppen.
Sofia Gubaidulina
Elsbeth Moser, Boris Pergamenschikow, Münchener Kammerorchester, Christoph Poppen
- Sieben Worte
- 1I. Vater, vergib ihnen, denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun04:14
- 2II. Wieb, siehe, das ist dein Sohn - Siehe, das ist deine Mutter03:51
- 3III. Wahrlich, ich sage dir: Heute wirst du mit mir im Paradiese sein03:50
- 4IV. Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen?08:40
- 5V. Mich dürstet05:13
- 6VI. Es ist vollbracht03:20
- 7VII. Vater, ich befehle meinen Geist in deine Hände05:20
- Zehn Präludien (für Violoncello solo)
- 8I. staccato - legato01:13
- 9II: legato - staccato02:33
- 10III. con sordino - senza sordino03:01
- 11IV. ricochet01:15
- 12V. sul ponticello - ordinario - sul tasto03:47
- 13VI. flagioletti02:29
- 14VII. al taco - da punta d'arco01:21
- 15VIII. arco - pizzicato01:17
- 16IX. pizzicato - arco02:53
- 17X. senza arco, senza pizzicato03:34
- 18De Profundis
13:30
If you haven’t yet been lured into the compelling world of Sofia Gubaidulina’s music, this might be just the disc to do it. Her “Seven Words” is built as a sort of double concerto for bayan (Russian button accordion) and cello. High and low, God and man are interwoven over a mysterious, velvety texture of strings. Pärt meets Penderecki – in the best possible way. Gorgeous, and unforgettable.
Andrew McGregor, BBC Music Magazine
From the day she was born (in 1931) in the Tatar Soviet Republic of the Central Volga region, Sofia Gubaidulina was influenced by the polarised natures of Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity. Her 1982 work “Seven Words” can be seen as the culmination of her output. Juxtaposing immense lyricism with sharp, fragmentary gestures, it is a stunning example of her musical ethos. The crisp and delicate strings from the Münchener Kammerorchester provide a lucid backdrop for the two soloists. The cello, representing “high art”, and the bayan “low art” are played with dazzling precision by Moser and Pergamenschikow.
Tarik O’Regan, The Observer
Composed in 1982, when she was still trapped behind the Iron Curtain, Seven Words is Sofia Gubaidulina’s reflection upon the Stations of the Cross. Like Haydn’s work on the same text, it is purely instrumental, consisting of seven consecutive slow movements. Gubaidulina’s instruments, though, are rather different: bayan (a Russian accordion), cello and chamber orchestra rather than string quartet. This is gestural yet profoundly moving music, cast in a startlingly exploratory language, given its time and place. The cellist Boris Pergamenschikow, the bayan player Elsbeth Moser and the Munich Chamber Orchestra give an engrossing performance. Pergamenschikow also plays the musically rewarding Ten Preludes, for solo cello, and Moser the reflective De Profundis.
Stephen Pettitt, Sunday Times
Hermann Conen’s insert notes speak of the difficulty of finding music today to set the Seven Last Words. I agree with him, but if any composer has the spiritual background and personal strength to attempt such a feat, it is Sofia Gubaidulina. Her extended meditation on this theme is the apotheosis of precisely the mixture of personal expressionism and religious faith so characteristic of this composer, and so exactly expressed in the opposition of chromaticism and white-note harmony, of the raucous bayan and the silky strings, mediated by the cosmic voyagings of the solo cello. … With the exception of the magical Offertorium, I believe that she has written nothing finer. Moser and Pergamenschikov play as though their lives depended on it, and they are quite superbly partnered (“accompanied” is far too demeaning a word) by the Munich Chamber Orchestra under Christoph Poppen. The “Ten Preludes” are far more abstract in feeling, as one would expect of a set of pieces that began life as didactic material. While they have, in the 30 years since they were written, matured and been categorized anew as genuine concert music, they nevertheless impress on a technical level rather than any other. “De profundis” is rather at the opposite extreme, in that it is a gut reaction to the words of the psalm, expressed through the often bizarre, sometimes quasi-electronic, unexpectedly beautiful sounds of the bayan, the Russian button accordion. … A challenging and moving disc, performed magnificently.
Ivan Moody, International Record Review
These three stunning works remain essential listening for anyone seeking to understand the ardent, mystical unconventional spirit of Sofia Gubaidulina. Though not conceived as such they make a satisfying triptych: the expressive qualities of the solo pieces for cello and for bayan come together in “Seven Words”, which pits these instruments against each other and against a plangently “white-note” string orchestra whose role is akin to that of a church choir, chanting their religious songs in the intervals of mortal combat. Something of this choric role is also found in “De profundis”, a solo composition of astonishing intensity for the bayan – a native Russian version of the accordian, which Gubaidulina writes for with such colour and variety it might be a gigantic pipe-organ. As for the “Ten Preludes”, these brillant athematic, “experimantal” studies in various techniques of cello-playing begin to sound like one of the instrument’s great solo cycles, at times so mysteriously lyrical one sorrows that Pablo Casals did not live long enough to make their acquaintance.
Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine
Selten passiert es, dass einem Musik von der CD noch Schauer über den Rücken jagt. Im Konzert ist man ihr ausgeliefert, aber im heimischen Sessel, die Fernbedienung griffbereit’ Dabei haben doch nur die Geigen ein Glissando über zwei Oktaven nach oben geschoben. Jäh wechselt die Beleuchtung. Und die Verzauberung hält an bis zum letzten Hauch der Musik, wenn die Töne verrosten und zerfallen wie ein altes Blechschild in leerer Landschaft. .. Selten wurde so intensive, weite Musik geschrieben wie die, mit der die “Sieben Worte” enden. So heißt das Werk für Cello, Bajan und Streicher, mit dem Sofia Gubaidulina den Tod des Erlösers am Kreuz in Töne setzt, in Klangerlebnisse, Klangvisionen, von denen auch der durchtrainierte Atheist sich gern gründlich transzendieren lässt. … Sie wurde im Westen spät entdeckt und war fast 50 Jahre alt, als Gidon Kremer mit ihrem “Offertorium” für eine Sensation sorgte, einer sinnlich strahlenden, autarken, atmenden Musik, gleichsam der Neuerfindung des Violinkonzerts. … Schostakowitsch stärkte ihr den Rücken beim Schreiben offiziell unerwünschter Musik – eben auch jener “Sieben Worte”, die 1982 entstanden, schon mehrfach eingespielt und jetzt zu hören auf einer in Ausstattung, Klang und vor allem Interpretation exemplarisch guten ECM-Produktion mit der Akkordeonistin Elsbeth Moser, dem Cellisten Boris Pergamenschikow und dem Münchener Kammerorchester unter Christoph Poppen. … In “Präludien” für Cello (1974) und “De profundis” für Bajan (1978) ist zu hören, wie meisterhaft sich Gubaidulina auf ihre “Sieben Worte” vorbereitet hat.
Volker Hagedorn, Die Zeit
In der Musik von Sofia Gubaidulina vollzieht sich eine atemberaubende Synthese mystischer Erfahrung und klanglicher Raserei wie sie nur noch in der Musik eines Olivier Messiaens erfahrbar ist. Drei ihrer wichtigen Werke liegen nun in einer Aufnahme des sich zu neuer interpretatorischer Größe entwickelnden Münchener Kammerorchesters unter Christoph Poppen vor, die als maßstäblich gelten darf. Fast sämtliche ihrer Werke haben einen religiösen oder spirituellen Hintergrund, dennoch gehören die “Sieben Worte” zu den zentralen Werken der seit Anfang der 90er Jahre bei Hamburg lebenden russischen Komponistin. Vergleicht man den klangmalerischen, bildhaften Charakter dieser Passionsvertonung mit ihrer monumentalen Johannes-Passion, ahnt man die Vielschichtigkeit ihrer Welt mystischer Klangmalerei. Mit derselben Eindringlichkeit werden auch in der Klangstudie “De Profundis” und in den “10 Präludien” für Cello solo spirituelle und lautmalerische Aspekte in Einklang gebracht. Sofia Gubaidulinas Religiosität wird in diesen Aufnahmen zu einem körperlichen Ereignis.
Sven Ahnert, Die Welt
All the works here ‘ Seven Words, Ten Preludes and De Profundis ‘ have been recorded elsewhere before, yet they work superbly well as a set; and the two soloists, cellist Boris Pergamenschikow and bayan player Elsbeth moser, are sensitive interpreters who bring a consistency of tone to the disc. … Representing Gubaidulina’s reflections on the Stations of the Cross, it’s an enigmatically programmatic score that unfolds in seven tautly composed sections. She uses the strings with admirable restraint, and the abiding memory of the piece is hearing the alienated tones of the cello and bayan blending, before blurring out of focus. … The Ten Preludes for solo cello were completed nearly 30 years ago, though Gubaidulina has continued to refine them since. They were initially written as pieces to be included in an anthology for cello students, but their resourcefulness and poetry give them life beyond their technical challenges. Each piece focuses on a particular technique of bowing or plucking, and Pergamenschikow’s performance is lively and inspiring. The solo bayan piece De Profundis ‘ perhaps Gubaidulina’s most famous score ‘ grew out of her experiences as a member of the improvisation group Astreya. The work is a reflection on human suffering, and this time the bayan’s roots as a folk instrument are sharply juxtaposed against white noise and avant garde gestures. The ascending bitonal chords ending the piece are inevitably reminiscent of Messiaen. Like the great French composer, Gubaidulina has produced a body of religious music with universal appeal.
Philip Clark, The Wire
Eine neue CD gibt Glegenheit, sich wieder einmal an das Phänomen Gubaidulina anzunähern. Es sind zunächst einmal klangliche Aspekte, die diese Musik unverwechselbar machen. Die intensive Auseinandersetzung mit volksmusikalischem Instrumentarium einerseits, mit Improvisation andererseits hat ihr zweifellos das Rüstzeug dazu geliefert. Ihre Musik ist nichts weniger als klangsinnlich, welche emotionale Situation sie sich auch darzustellen vorgenommen hat. Zwar profitiert sie mit der Bevorzugung des russischen Bajans in ihren Werken von einem gewissen Akkordeon-Bonus; auch sind die frappanten fließenden Übergänge zwischen zwei vermeintlich wesensfremden Instrumenten wie Cello und Bajan, die plötzlich kaum noch auseinander zu halten sind, nicht ihre Erfindung. Vielmehr ist es eine schwer beschreibbare Rhetorik in ihren Werken, ausgehend von Erfahrung menschlichen Atmens und Sprechens. Ein singendes Cello, das jedem romantischen Rühstück Ehre machen würde, steht ihr ebenso zu Gebote wie nach Luft japsende Akkordeonklänge, die ein beklemmendes Gefühl des drohenden Erstickens transportieren.Thematisch geht es in dieser neuen CD um die Passion. Wie die ihr wesensverwandten Komponisten Alfred Schnittke und Arvo Pärt hat Sofia Gubaidulina in ihrer Musik zu religiösen Themen .. Gewichtiges auszusagen. Dass sie sich an eine Vertonung der Sieben Worte wagt, bleibt dennoch erstaunlich. Es drohte die satte Gefühlsschwere und schöne Trauer der entsprechenden Werke aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, die Bilder von trauernd sinnierenden Jungfrauen und antikischem Zypressenduft à la Böcklin und Feuerbach aufsteigen lassen. Selbstverständlich konnte dies für Gubaidulina keine Option sein. Sie entschied sich folgerichtig für den von Haydn vorgezeichneten Weg, das letztlich Unsagbare des Leidens und Sterbens am Kreuz rein instrumental darzustellen, ungeachtet der in direkter Rede überlieferten Christus-Worte. Dabei ist ihr ein erschütterndes Werk gelungen, das man entweder bewundern oder zurückweisen wird, dem man aber nicht mit Gelassenheit oder Gleichgültigkeit wird begegnen können.Vorzüglich fügt sich dazu das Stück “De profundis” für Bajan solo, das in Akkordeonkreisen schon seit geraumer Zeit als eines der Paradestücke zeitgenössischen Schaffens herumgereicht wird. Hier ist die Faktur der Musik komplexer, doch die Intensität ist keineswegs geringer als bei den Sieben Worten. … De profundis ist nichts weniger als ein Wurf, die Einspielung insgesamt eine echte, quasi saisongerecht erschienene Passions-CD.
Stephan Thomas, Tages-Anzeiger
Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Soviet Republic in 1931 and grew up in Kazan, at the crossroads, as she once said, of many diverse cultures within the Russian empire. Kazan, an area proportionately rich in craftsmen and artists, was spiritually rich, too. Gubaidulina’s own family background embraced Jews and Muslims as well as Christians of Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic persuasions. One of Gubaidulina’s earliest musical memories is of her grandmother chanting Islamic prayers. She has said that she considers herself “a daughter of two worlds, whose soul lives in the music of the East and the West”. Her personal commitment to the Russian Orthodox faith has not rendered her unmindful of the insights of other religious perspectives. And as with other major composers from the former Soviet Union – from Arvo Pärt to Galina Ustvolskaya – the religious impulse is closely intertwined in her work with the artistic impulse, and one can hardly be discussed in isolation from the other. “There is no more important reason for composing music”, Sofia Gubaidulina has said, “than spiritual renewal.”
Neither the spiritual conviction inherent in Gubaidulina’s work nor her music’s originality won her friends in officialdom: “The reason for Soviet hostility lay in the fact that our whole music revealed the unwelcome phenomenon of freedom, of the inner freedom of the personality. The position of inner independence was simply unacceptable, and wherever that was detected in music it was objected to …”
It was, however, precisely this independence that Shostakovich had welcomed when he praised Gubaidulaina’s student studies at the Moscow Conservatory, saying “I want you to continue along your mistaken path”.
Shostakovich, Gubaidulina told journalist Karen Campbell, “encouraged me to be myself, no matter what everybody else said.” She counts Shostakovich, alongside Webern and Bach, as a crucial influence on her musical thinking, but she has also been influenced by folk and ritual music of the Caucasus and the Far East and too by her experiences – rare amongst contemporary composers – as an improviser. In 1975 she founded, with Viktor Susslin and Vyacheslav Artyomov the (still intermittently operative) free music ensemble Atreya. As they played, she once said, “sonic imagination became one with our ideas. No longer was there a gap between what we heard and what we imagined; sound and soul had become identical.” Gubaidulina’s knowledge of the potential of concert and folk instruments – how to make them “breathe”, how to draw unorthodox sonorities from them – is rooted in these improvisational sound explorations.
“Seven Words” addresses that most difficult of subjects, Christ’s suffering and death on the Cross. Not many composers have felt equal to the challenge although Haydn’s Seven Words of “Our Saviour on the Cross” (see ECM New Series 1756) is one of the enduring works to approach this theme.
Hermann Conen in the CD booklet: “Sofia Gubaidulina has accepted the challenge of attempting to capture the great mystery in sound. Although the seven movements are, at least initially, clearly separated by string passages, there is no parallelism of word and sound in the traditional sense. It is more a matter of the instruments ‘uttering’ what cannot be sung or said; they ‘speak’ with ‘instrumental, metaphorical gestures’ (Gubaidulina).The cross symbolism palpable throughout the ‘Seven Words’ begins on the instrumental level: the cello, coming from the art music of ‘high culture’, stands for what is ‘lofty’; the bayan, a button accordion from the sphere of Russian folk music. Although the sound production is totally different (bowed strings, metal reeds vibrated by air), the two instruments reveal astonishingly similar sonorities, sometimes to the point of indistinguishability…The music of the string orchestra is devised as a contrast to the harsh chromaticism of the cello/bayan and remains clearly separated during the first two movements. The presto and pianissimo string passages soaring from a note played in unison open up a tonal sphere that rises and falls like the sweep of wings … From the very first sound a ritualised musical meditation begins, its individual core elements unfolding almost imperceptibly at first and then growing inexorably towards one another.”
Elsbeth Moser, who plays the bayan on this recording, is one of Gubaidulina’s closest musical associates and dedicatee of several works (including the landmark “Silenzio”) and understands the composer’s intentions. Her performance of “De Profundis” (composed 1978) is astonishing. Writing of a recent concert, critic Richard Whitehouse noted that the bayan, “in the hands of Elsbeth Moser on the solo ‘De Profundis’, effortlessly combined the provocation of a new sound resource with the timelessness of a traditional instrument.”
The “Ten Preludes” (1974, revised 1999) for cello began life as a set of teaching pieces, with each of the Preludes addressing a different technical consideration, but there is space in these fascinating pieces also for the interpreter to make his own mark. Gubaidulina: “Particularly the last prelude in the cycle gives performers an opportunity to make the work their own . There, improvisatory passages, which every player can interpret in a different way, are interposed in the composed score. I planned this deliberately, to illustrate how an instrumentalist’s creative imagination alters musical content.”
Boris Pergamenshikov gives his creative imagination free rein here. The Leningrad born cellist has been an important contributor to international concert activity since emigrating to the West in 1977. His varied soloist or chamber music experience has included work with Claudio Abbado, the Amadeus and Alban Berg Quartets, Gidon Kremer, Witold Lutoslawski, Yehudi Menuhin, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mstislav Rostropovich, Andras Schiff, and Sándor Végh.
Pergamenshikov first recorded for ECM in 1985, appearing on a recording from the Lockenhaus Festival where he played music of Shostakovich with Gidon Kremer, Thomas Zehetmair, and Nobuko Imai.