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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.
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.
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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).
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