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A Voice Alone

Dr. Christopher Coleman | HONG KONG | 11/20/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Galina Ustvolskaya (b. 1919) studied composition with Shostakovich, but his influence is barely perceptible in her music. There is a certain sardonic quality and a relentlessness they share, but Ustvolskaya completely abandoned the Romanticism that Shostakovich embraced. Ustvolskaya's music is unique in its approach and resultant sound--the word "uncompromising" hardly does it justice. Textures tend to take on one of two aspects. Most common, particularly in the earlier works, are textures spare as skeletons; only a single line, or two-part note-against-note widely spaced counterpoint. In later works, Ustvolskaya turns to clusters dense as exploding bombs--there is almost nothing in-between. Rhythmically her works consist to an amazing extent of a single rhythmic value repeated for an entire section, even an entire movement. Frequent, immediate repetition of a note, cluster, or short phrase pounds an idea brutally. When coupled with the often disjunct nature of her horizontal lines the effect serves to strip her music from any familiar context, as though this were the music Pierre Boulez was searching for when he wrote his famous article "Schoenberg is Dead". What remains is interval, in the early sonatas, and pitch in the later ones, seemingly stripped of everything else. Many listeners will find Ustvolskaya's music unattractive in the extreme; but it makes no pretence at attractiveness. Instead, it seeks to be compelling, and at its best, under the hands of the remarkable pianist Markus Hinterhauser, it is that indeed."