Composer of the Week: Sofia Gubaidulina

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Sofia Gubaidulina (b 1931): Conflict with the Authorities

Conflict with the Authorities

Sofia Gubaidulina (b 1931)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Sofia Gubaidulina (b 1931), Conflict with the Authorities

Sofia Gubaidulina's blacklisting in 1979 by Tikhon Khrennikov, with Donald Macleod.

Sofia Gubaidulina was among seven composers who were denounced publicly by Tikhon Khrennikov in 1979. Donald Macleod considers the circumstances with Gerard McBurney.

Sofia Gubaidulina was among seven composers denounced by Tikhon Khrennikov, Secretary of the highly influential Union of Soviet Composers in 1979. Donald Macleod considers the circumstances surrounding this speech with Gerard McBurney.

To mark Sofia Gubaidulina’s ninetieth birthday,  Donald Macleod and Gerard McBurney explore five different aspects of her progressive and distinctive music.  Gubaidulina has been living in Germany since 1992 and is still busy composing today.  When she was born in 1931 in Tatarstan, the Soviet Union was under Stalinist rule. Up until her emigration, she worked as a composer under the strictly regulated conditions determined by Soviet cultural policies. Across the week we get an insight into the life of a composer behind the Iron Curtain, as Gubaidulina developed her own creative path, un-swayed by any hint of ideological pressure.

Aside from Khrennikov's public explanation, the Communist Party had long regarded religious belief as superstitious and backward. The relationship between religion, the spiritual and her music may have been another reason to regard Gubaidulina in a negative light.  But for Gubaidulina there would be "no weightier occupation than the re-composition of spiritual integrity through the composition of music.”

Johannes Passion 
I: The word    								
St. Petersburg Chamber Choir 
Chorus & Orchestra of the Marinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg 
Valery Gergiev, director 

Rejoice! Sonata for Violin and Cello
V: Listen to the small voice within 							
Gidon Kremer, violin 
Yo-Yo Ma, cello 

Stimmen….. Verstummen  (excerpt) 
8th Movement (out of 12) 10’36” 
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor 					

In Croce  
Germano Scurti, bayan 
Francesco Dillon, cello 

Alleluja 
Vjeruju (Credo)    
Da ispolnjatsja usta maja: quarter note 
Danish National Radio Choir 
Copenhagen Boys’ Choir 
Danish National RSO 
Dmitri Kitayenko, conductor

Composer of the Week: Sofia Gubaidulina (b 1931)

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod and Gerard McBurney explore Sofia Gubaidulina's distinctive music.

To mark Sofia Gubaidulina's ninetieth birthday, Donald Macleod and Gerard McBurney explore five different aspects of her progressive and distinctive music.

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