About the Concept of the Second Symphony by Galina Ustvolskaya

Статья посвящена анализу Второй симфонии Г. Уствольской, исследованию особенностей композиции и драматургии. Для интерпретации художественной идеи привлекается канонический источник ее поэтического текста. Впервые рассматривается возможность влияния философских работ Якова Друскина. The article is devoted to the analysis of the Second Symphony by G. Ustvolskaya, the study of compositional and dramatic features. The author draws on the canonical source of poetic text to interpret an artistic idea, for the first time considering the possibility of the influence of Jacob Druskin philosophical works.

Galina Ustvolskaya Outside, Inside, and Beyond Music History

Even among devotees of her music, Galina Ustvolskaya is often reduced to an intersectional victim of gendered and political repression, a fearful casualty of the Soviet system. Her percussive scores, including the Sixth Piano Sonata, have earned Ustvolskaya the nickname “lady with the hammers.” This article reviews the literature about this composer alongside scores from the beginning, middle, and end of her career, asking: Should her life and work be considered from a less empathetic perspective in order to take greater account of her craft, and to avoid the gendered, cultural, and political furrows that would narrow our conception of her music? Instead of defining Ustvolskaya’s life and work against our own expectations, this essay questions our assumptions.

1989 and After

Beginning with examples by Steve Reich, Galina Ustvolskaya, Merzbow, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Bright Sheng, this chapter introduces the diversity of composition being produced at the end of the 1980s and explains the need for a new form of music history that can reflect and organize that variety. It provides a rationale for 1989 as a starting point for that history and describes six main developments in society, culture, and technology that have enabled and inspired developments in Western art music since then: social liberalization, globalization, digitization, the Internet, late capitalist economics, and the green movement.

Record Reviews

The Music of Galina Ustvolskaya Ronald WeitzmanRecent Birtwistle discs Nicolas HodgesHugh Wood's Quartets Stephen CollissonKnussen's Stravinsky on DG Michael OliverZender's ‘Winterreise’, ‘Moonchild's Dream’ Peter PalmerTippett's Piano Sonatas Philip ThomasTurnage on NMC Stephen CollissonQuartet music from Italy John WarnabyAlan Hovhaness Bret JohnsonHermann Suter's ‘Le Laudi’ Peter PalmerMusic from Iceland Guy RickardsEt cetera Martin Anderson

Galina Ustvolskaya: ‘Sind Sie mir nicht böse!’

The last sounds of her Third Symphony have died down; conductor Valery Gergiev turns about, clapping. A wave of surprise and emotion passes through Amsterdam Concertgebouw as Galina Ustvolskaya, shy but determined, climbs the stage. The audience, aware of the historic significance of this moment, continues applauding for some minutes, and she returns to the stage a second time. But this time she turns about half-way up the stairs, and leaves the hall.

Shostakovich and the Ustvolskaya Connexion: a textual investigation

In the atlas of Soviet music, many roads lead to and from Shostakovich. A New York Continuum conceit last year drew attention to an intriguing and little known thematic connexion between Shostakovich and his fellow composer Galina Ustvolskaya (born 1919). The works of this composer shared the program with those of Ruth Crawford Seeger and Grazyna Bacewicz under the banner ‘Three Women Pioneers.’ Each was among the first women in their country to have forged an original and distinguished body of work from the resources of 20th-century music.