Galina Ustvolskaya - Piano Sonatas 1-6 (1995) EAC RIP APE + CUE + LOG COVER + BOOK RAR FILES

(3% recovery) Classical hatART CD 6170 Tracklist: 1 Sonata No. 2 Sonata No. 3 Sonata No. 4 Sonata No. 5 Sonata No. 6 Sonata No.

204 Mb

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Ustvolskaya Ustvolskaya Ustvolskaya Ustvolskaya Ustvolskaya Ustvolskaya

10:00 9:07 17:31 10:34 16:59 6:15

Who wouldn t sympathise with Shostakovich s fascination for his brilliant pupil, whi ch master wouldn t feel tempted to ask Galina to marry him as he did? Galina, The Lady with the Hammer, not the hammer of gods, ethereal and subtle, but the hamme r made of steel banging against the steel of an anvil. Steel against steel in a clash that produced atonal gold. In Galina s template, the clich stating that melli fluous combinations lead to thunderous outcomes is subverted. Thereby, the rever se goes on: brutal superposition of thunder upon thunder leads to subtlety. That is the offer of this distinct and highly unlikely heiress of Eric Satie. The sa me Satie who is the unlikely precursor of Morton Feldman, Galina s apparent antipo de. With a view to gain insight into GU s piano music, let us take a closer glimpse at a polemic excerpt showing Alex Ross opinion on Ustvolskaya s piano works, where h e asserts that: 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 lyric al repose. Most important, every passage is given a clear and vivid place in a l inear narrative. Sounds become hard objects in space. As Feldman approximated ce rtain aspects of abstract painting, Ustvolskaya has made music into sculpture. It is easy to agree with Ross s claim that Ustvolskaya would not fall in the trap of practising complexity for complexity s stake as some Serialists have done, just as non-serialist composers stemming from any school have attempted to do. However , I am taken aback by Ross assertion that much of her work is more or less tonal, or at least modal . First, Ross is falling into the time-old pitfall conflating Se rialism with Atonality. The fact that GU did not practise complexity for complex ity stake would not exempt GU s from serialist (or serial) epistemes: she was inde ed a serialist composer in the patterns she moulded, and along which unfolded he r blend of atonalism. I am sure Ross is perfectly aware of the possibility to si ngle out entire tonal passages out of a score whose structure is unmistakably an d consistently atonal, which would not make that music less atonal, no big deal. Along these lines, Ross (and his more or less tonal ) knows very well that GU s aesth etics is indeed atonal, and brilliant at being so for the matter. Moreover, it w as the serialist solutions that enabled GU to keep an absolutely original grip o n atonalism. Hence, those same serialist solutions systematically mulched GU ins piration, making possible what Ross describes as long, regular strings of notes i n formations resembling plainchant, pinned on percussive patterns. Furthermore, n o musicological verbiage will, by some kind of rhetoric magic, turn GU s atonal so natas into Keith Jarrett s Kln Concert , to the same extent that the book he wrote, The Rest is Noise , which I enjoy and respect, will never become and it was never int ended to become Theodor Adorno s Philosophy of New Music . Last but not least, it was through and not despite Ustvolskaya s successful endeavours to compose within ato

nal rationalities that she managed to turn music into sculpture, like Morton Fel dman s abstractions from painting. Ross should know better how to make GU s music more gullible to his readers. Assum ing the hypothesis that turning her music into tonal would make her art more gulli ble is a dubious stratagem, which underestimates his readers and misrepresents t he composer s achievements. HauHut Label published unflawed renditions by Marianne Schroeder of some of GU s a chievements that avant-garde music fans cannot afford to bypass. Each of Ustvolskaya s Six Sonatas sonatas with no name hammers into life a physiogno my of darkness. Were there darker provinces of the night, and Galina s sonatas would thereby reson ate.