12/6/2016 Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Ustvolskaya

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

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And who, pray tell, is Ustvolskaya? A public that has embraced
Gayby Prokofiev and Shostakovich, acknowledged Alfred Schnittke,
Guardian Music taken note of Sofia Gubaidulina and eyed Giya Kancheli might
Musical America well grow weary at the prospect of greeting yet another figure in
New Music Links the endless procession of Russian and former-Soviet
New Yorker Culture Desk composers. All the same, here she is. The collected works of
NewMusicBox Galina Ustvolskaya, utterly unknown a decade ago, have
NPR Classical suddenly burst into view: performances have dotted several
NY Times Music continents, nearly a dozen recordings have seeped into the
Audio Guides for Books
record stores. An imposing figure in 20th-century musical
SEARCH history has stepped out of the mist.

Actually, there is not much to tell, at least by way of biography.

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She lives alone in St. Petersburg and declines all requests for
photographs or interviews. In the one photograph supplied by
her publisher, she bears a confusing resemblance to
Gubaidulina. Scant material appears under her name in the
standard reference works: born 1919; studied with
Shostakovich; wrote works with titles like "Dawn over the
Fatherland" and "Young Pioneers" during the Stalinist years. In Glossary
1958 her formidable Violin Sonata perplexed a delegation of
American composers. Roy Harris called it "kind of ugly."

Elizabeth Wilson's "Shostakovich: A Life Remembered," a

...
magnificent documentary study published earlier this year by
Princeton University Press, fills in a bit more detail. It seems
that Ustvolskaya had a very close relationship with
Shostakovich, perhaps even a romantic one; and, more
relevantly, Shostakovich regarded her not merely as the most
promising of his students but as a major voice in her own right.
In a ringing public endorsement, he once said, "I am convinced
that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve worldwide
renown, to be valued by all who perceive truth in music to be of
paramount importance." In a private letter, he went further: "It
is not you who are influenced by me; rather it is I who am
influenced by you." And he paid her the ultimate compliment of
quoting her music in several of his works.

Ustvolskaya's earliest extant pieces--two piano sonatas and a

Clarinet Trio from 1949--certainly show the influence of
Shostakovich, but they also establish a formidable independent
voice. Slow-moving, semi-tonal, sparsely expressive lines in the

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12/6/2016 Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Ustvolskaya
trio echo the chamber style Shostakovich developed in the early
quartets and Second Piano Trio. But instead of summoning up
rhythmic momentum and striding toward Shostakovichian
climaxes, this music closes in obsessively upon itself. The
earliest piano sonatas are more of a direct shock: the principal
precursor here is not Shostakovich at all but Erik Satie, and in
particular the static, starkly dissonant pieces Satie wrote under
the influence of Rosicrucian mysticism. Otherwise,
Ustvolskaya's harsh, blunt, engimatic textures sound like
nothing else in musical history.

One of the century's grand originals, Ustvolskaya has struck

deeper and deeper into her own private landscape. In her Violin
Sonata of 1952, she established her peculiar declamatory style in
definitive form. The later piano sonatas are ablaze with
precisely fashioned cluster chords and violent dynamic
contrasts. She does not hesitate to fill her scores with triple and
quadruple fortissimos: she has colonized the higher end of the
dynamic spectrum much as Morton Feldman took possession of
the lower. After a silence of several years, she returned in the
1970's and 80's with three Compositions and five Symphonies,
fiercely concise works that employ ever more bizarre and brutal
instrumental combinations--flute, tuba and piano; or eight
double basses, piano, and "wooden cube"; or trumpet, tam-tam,
piano and contralto.

Brutality has become the hallmark of her style. One critic called
her "the lady with the hammer." But her extremities of
dissonance and timbre are always set against a bracing
simplicity of texture and rhythm. She is at the furthest possible
remove from the Serialists, practicing complexity for
complexity's stake. Much of her work is more or less tonal, or at
least modal: long, regular strings of notes in formations
resembling plainchant, pinned on percussive patterns. There
are also some startling stretches of untroubled lyrical repose.
Most important, every passage is given a clear and vivid place in
a linear narrative. Sounds become hard objects in space. As
Feldman approximated certain aspects of abstract painting,
Ustvolskaya has made music into sculpture.

With the exception of the earlier symphonies, virtually the entire

corpus of Ustvolskaya's published work has shown up on
recordings in the last two years. The adventurous Swiss label
Hat Art, which had previously done great things for Feldman,
led the way with a superb rendering of the Clarinet Trio, Fifth
Sonata and Violin Duet, with the commanding Dutch avant-
gardist Reinbert de Leeuw at the piano (6115; CD). De Leeuw, a
magically glacial interpreter of Satie, approaches Ustvolskaya
with similar patience and purity of tone. The same performer is
due to release a disk of the three Compositions in Philips; Hat
Art's series has meanwhile continued with Rohan de Saram's
account of the faintly Shostakovichian Grand Duet and
Marianne Schroeder's version of the needlesome Twelve
Preludes (6130; CD).

A new Belgian label called Megadisc has given Hat Art

competition with a set of four Ustvolskaya disks, encompassing

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12/6/2016 Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Ustvolskaya
most of her mature works (MDC 7863, 7865, 7867, 7876; CD's).
These performances by the pianist Oleg Malov and the St.
Petersurg Soloists are not as polished as Hat Art's, and the
sound is not nearly as lustrous, but there is an engaging
briskness and even playfulness in these musicians' approach.
Until a new disk arrives from Hat Art, the dryly intense Malov
has the monopoly on the complete cycle of piano sonatas, which
he learned under the composer's supervision in St. Petersburg.

And there's more: the Octet has also been given a fine
performance by members of London Musici on Conifer Classics,
considerably sweeter in tone than Malov's. This disk also brings
the visceral drama of the Fifth Symphony (with recitations by
the baritone Sergei Leiferkus) and Shostakovich's thoroughly
ingratiating Piano Quintet (75605 51194 2; CD). Finally, the
young cellist Maya Beiser has logically paired works by the two
great Russian women: Ustvolskaya's Grand Duet and
Gubaidulina Ten Preludes and "In Croce." Beiser displays
admirable concentration and strength of tone (Koch
International 3-7258-2 H1; CD).

Ustvolskaya is to be approached with caution. She may inspire

admiration, or she may inspire frustration, even revulsion. Woe
to the pleasure-seeking listener who spots certain religiose
titles--"Dona Nobis Pacem," "Amen," "Dies Irae"--and expects a
Mystic Minimalist after the fashion of Henryk Gorecki or Arvo
Prt. This is religiosity with hard edges, penance for esoteric
sin. Forms emerge from pitch blackness only when the eyes
have become accustomed to the lack of light.

February 06, 2005 | Permalink

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