Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025) Figures of Time
Figures of Time (1994)
Introitus: concerto for piano and chamber orchestra (1978 rev. 2016)
Chaconne for solo piano (1962)
Revue Music for Symphony orchestra and Jazz Band (1976 rev. 1995 and 2002)
Alice di Piazza (piano), NDR Big Band (in Revue only), Basel Sinfonietta/Titus Engel
rec. September 2024 at Jahrhunderhalle, Bochum, Germany (Revue), December 2024 at Casino Basel, Switzerland (other works)
Naxos 8.551487 [76]

Despite having heard a number of her works, and, indeed, having reviewed some of them, I still don’t really have a clear sense of Gubaidulina as a composer. This latest disc, containing a range of her works from early to late, gives another opportunity for trying to understand what she is about.

Figures of Time is the most recent work here, although two of the others have been revised at later dates. It is very episodic. It begins with wispy sounds, with intervening flurries on flutes, with the brass slowly coming in and becoming prominent. Then there is a strange episode of buzzing and clicking sounds, gradually setting up a rhythmic pattern – this section made me think of Varèse’s Poème électronique. Then there were single lines moving from the bass to the high treble, a shimmering passage, and a trumpet call leading to a brief tattoo. And so it goes on. The individual sections are inventive and often beautiful but I got no sense of the work as a whole. As a meditation on time it struck me as far inferior to Birtwistle’s Triumph of Time or Dutilleux’s The Shadows of Time.

Introitus is a concerto for piano and chamber orchestra dating originally from 1978 but revised in 2016 in collaboration with Alice de Piazza, the pianist here. The title is a nod to the composer’s spiritual interests. Again it is episodic. It opens with a solo flute, then the piano enters with chords in the bass in a pulsating rhythm. Eventually a kind of dialogue develops between the piano and the woodwind culminating in some crunchy chords, The work closes with a lament on the piano followed by a cadenza. There are some beguiling sounds but I had no sense of the whole.

Chaconne is much the earliest work here and is also much easier to follow,. The writing for the piano is good in a rather Hindemithian kind of way, though one passage was very close to Messiaen. Still, this did not matter: this is a good work and I enjoyed it.

Finally, we have Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band. This caused a sensation, indeed a scandal at its first performance in Soviet Russia, so it is certainly of historical importance. Of course, classical composers have been using ideas and motifs from jazz for a long time, starting with Stravinsky and Ravel in the 1920s. However, setting an actual jazz band next to, or against, a symphony orchestra was an idea begun, I believe by Gunther Schuller in the 1950s; he called it third stream music. Much of this has passed me by, but it produced at least one clear masterpiece, Maxwell Davies’s St Thomas Wake of 1969, which was at one time quite popular. I am afraid Gubaidulina’s piece is no masterpiece though it is quite pleasant listening.

The performances here have been carefully prepared. As I noted, Alice Di Piazza had a hand in the revision of Introitus and she obviously gives an authoritative performance. The NDR Big Band strut their stuff with aplomb. Titus Engel stays on top of it all. The recording is good. The booklet discusses three of the four works but says nothing about Chaconne. The timings on the disc are wrong. I make them Figures of Time 30.05, Introitus 22.24, Chaconne 11.22 and Revue 11.54. The disc gives an overview of Gubaidulina’s work across her career but I remain puzzled by her idiom.

Stephen Barber

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