Invited audiences at the BBC's invaluable orchestral concerts all know what tremendous work the house orchestras put in, sometimes with little obvious artistic reward but occasionally turning up music with real lasting qualities and that might have disappeared without trace were it not for their advocacy.
Here are two such works, admirably played by just such an orchestra. Both deserve to reach audiences outside the studio and both have a better than average chance of survival. Both are examples of the poeticized atonality which is one of the most significant of our age's musical linguae francae and in which Russians have found themselves especially at home. Both mix orchestral colours with post-impressionistic delicacy, yet neither is into cheap seduction techniques. This is substantial, expressive and challenging music.
Pro et Contra strikes me as one of the most beguiling and sure-footed of all Gubaidulina's orchestral works. It is a large triptych, with a meditative central panel some 20 minutes in duration surrounded by two movements each half that length. The dialectic implied by the title no doubt operates at more than one level, but the most immediately perceptible, certainly the most immediately impressive feature, is the varied ways in which the texture sinks to the extreme depths and then effloresces to the heights. For expressive impact this is closely followed by the central movement's gravitation towards the Alleluia chorale which evidently supplies the work's melodic material. And the irresolution which follows the third movement's final violent climax feels like an emotionally truthful ending.
Firsova's Cassandra sounds initially like a distant cousin of Wagner's Tristan, and throughout its duration the harmonies evoke a state of delectable suspension, not so far removed from Takemitsu (or so it seems to me) and ending with echoes of glacial Shostakovich. In fact the concept of the piece draws on the Trojan prophetess myth, relating it to the situation of present-day Russia and casting cello and bass drum in the roles of Cassandra and Fate.
Under their Principal Conductor who has done so much to raise their profile the BBC National Orchestra of Wales make a splendid case for both works. Some of the biggest climaxes in the Gubaidulina do sound rather congested, but I doubt if that can be laid at the orchestra's door, nor at that of BIS's truthful and well-judged recording.'