2006-12-18 (ISO)
Russian-Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina, in Toronto recently for performances celebrating her 75th birthday, is a prominent artist with an international reputation for evocative, stunning music. Toca Loca and New Music Concerts presented a selection of her chamber music on November 25th and 27th, respectively. The CBC recorded the latter event for future broadcast on "Two New Hours," and I recommend tuning in.
Most, perhaps all, of Gubaidulina's music is informed by her religious faith, now openly asserted by the composer with the nominal evaporation of Soviet totalitarianism:
"I am a religious person... and by 'religion' I mean re-ligio, the re-tying of a bond... restoring the legato of life. Life divides man into many pieces... There is no weightier occupation than the recomposition of spiritual integrity through the composition of music."
Personal, philosophical, and poetic, her music is clearly devotional, glorifying and reflecting her belief at the highest level.
Rough-hewn, her music is reminiscent of Xenakis, at least in surface if not concept or form. There is a naïve quality to her instrumental writing; imbued with energy and motion, it's convincing and powerful, and not nearly as jejune as her scores may imply. Consider "Silenzio," on the NMC programme, in which the cellist repeats a rising chromatic pattern over an open-string drone - it's the new-music equivalent of Lenny Kravitz screaming "Baby, yeah!" over a pentatonic guitar riff. In context, everything is viable.
Gubaidulina's music is very satisfying, largely via its dramatic arc and strength of rhetoric. Though sections tend toward overlong, and the forms curious, her music never vexes the listener. This is particularly interesting as her processes are not especially clear, begging the question: what's unifying this composition? Though deep structure is present (her "Offertorium" is a classic case), Gubaidulina conceals it through accretion, and the resultant surface is an intuitive unfolding of tension and release. Tracing Romanticism, she's a painter, not a structuralist, moving against self-similarity, embracing a top-down conception. Her position that "form has an influence on material, not vice-versa..." is rare, or unstylish, in composition today, given its focus on the atomic sphere of parameter and sound.
Gubaidulina's theatrical sensitivity is evident in "Verwandlung (Transformation);" exploring the trombonist-as-clown meme, she's connecting in the repertoire to Berio's "Sequenza V." John Marcellus, performing with Toca Loca, was fantastic in the soloist role. With her experience composing film music, and her clear proclivity for drama, why hasn't Gubaidulina written an opera?
Returning to NMC, there was a beautiful "WTF?" timbral moment during "In Croce" as Friedrich Lips and his bayan uncannily imitated a tam-tam over and over again; though a very simple gesture, it was captivating, and a testament to Gubaidulina's confidence, imagination, and sense of timing.
Very few living composers can reach this depth of direct emotional expression, and it was a pleasure to experience her music.