USTVOLSKAYA Sonata. Trio. Duet
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Galina Ustvolskaya
Genre:
Chamber
Label: ECM New Series
Magazine Review Date: 12/2014
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 68
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 481 0883
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Sonata for Violin and Piano |
Galina Ustvolskaya, Composer
Galina Ustvolskaya, Composer Markus Hinterhäuser, Piano Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Composer |
Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano |
Galina Ustvolskaya, Composer
Galina Ustvolskaya, Composer Markus Hinterhäuser, Piano Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Composer Reto Bieri, Clarinet |
Duet for Violin and Piano |
Galina Ustvolskaya, Composer
Galina Ustvolskaya, Composer Markus Hinterhäuser, Piano Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Composer |
Author: Richard Whitehouse
Separated by just over a decade, these pieces constitute a telling overview of the composer’s evolution during that time. Already with the Clarinet Trio (1949) there is a tendency to move away from tensile thematic development, inherited from her teacher Shostakovich, towards the starkly gestural manner that came to the fore with the Violin Sonata (1952). Here a multi-movement sequence can be discerned; the determining principle is of vividly defined motifs in constant variation – maintaining their rhythmic profile despite (or because of?) the volatile interplay of violin and piano. Formal continuity had disappeared in the Duet (1964), its half-hour span focusing on that limited pool of gestures whose initially confrontational progress reaches a peak of anguish just past the midpoint; passing into a subdued stand-off with the main motifs gradually dispersed by a silence that ultimately proves all-enveloping.
Music such as this admits of no false compromise and accordingly finds doughty advocacy in Kopatchinskaja – ably partnered by Markus Hinterhäuser and, in the Trio, by Reto Bieri. The sound has a suitably unsparing immediacy, though Paul Griffiths’s note rather risks tying the listener up in knots. Not that this prevents this disc taking its place at the forefront of the Ustvolskaya discography.
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
SubscribeGramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.