Truth in Music: Galina Ustvolskaya – Piano Sonatas

We’ve recently acquired a truly fantastic collection of CDs here are at Hillside Harmonies. There is nothing mundane; very little ordinary Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, for example; and plenty of composers that we’ve rarely (or never) encountered, which is quite something considering the amount of music that we’ve collectively heard.

We like to learn as we listen, so first on the listening pile was a CD of piano sonatas by the Soviet composer Galina Ustvolskaya. I remember hearing some truly monumental and uniquely-orchestrated works by her at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the late ’90s (including Composition No. 2 for eight double basses, piano and wooden cube), but I was unprepared for the grinding power of these sonatas.

Ustvolskaya was born in 1919 in Petrograd. Despite the backing of her teacher Shostakovich, her music was rarely performed until the fall of the USSR. Perhaps this is hardly surprising, given the uncompromising nature of her work. The Piano Sonatas are good examples, using very simple musical ideas and an unchanging pulse to create moments of unbearable tension. The landscapes she creates seem at first to be grey and forbidding, yet within these narrow confines relatively small gestures take on great significance. It is truly distinctive music, full of drama and strangely moving. We are left with a profound sense of a truth having been told, as Shostakovich noted in a letter to Boris Tishchenko in 1970:

“I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve world fame, and be valued by all who hold truth to be the essential element of music.”

Pianist Markus Hinterhäuser gives these sonatas a fully-committed performance, although no other approach would succeed – this is simply not music that can be ‘phoned in’! The recording quality is excellent, capturing the wide dynamic range and sonorities. Thoroughly recommended for an abstractly intense musical experience.