Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006)
Symphony No. 1 for two boys’ voices and orchestra (1955-1956)
Symphony No, 2 True and Eternal Bliss for male reciter and small orchestra (1979)
Symphony No. 3 Jesus Messiah, save us!  for male reciter and small orchestra (1983)
Symphony No. 4 Prayer for contralto, piano, trumpet and tamtam (1985-1986)
Symphony No, 5 for male reciter, oboe, trumpet, tuba, violin and percussion (wooden cube)
Oliver Barlow and Arlo Murray (boy trebles), Barbara Kozelj (contralto), Sergej Merkusjev (reciter), Joonas Ahonen (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Christian Karlsen
rec. 2023, Henry Wood Hall, London, UK
Russian texts and English translation included
BIS BIS2304 SACD [87]

Galina Ustvolskaya is the mystery woman of Russian music. Although she was a pupil of Shostakovich and he seems to have admired her music, quoting from it and indeed apparently even proposing to her, she later repudiated him, saying he taught her little and that she did not care for his work. She taught composition herself for many years in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and wrote works in the approved socialist realist style favoured by the Soviet authorities. She later repudiated all such works, though apparently some have resurfaced more recently. Her acknowledged works run to only twenty-one opus numbers, with the five symphonies we have here, six piano sonatas and a handful of other mostly  chamber works.

Although she is commonly said to have developed a unique idiom which is unlike anything else, this really means it is unlike that of most Russian composers and of Western composers of her time. It seems to me that anyone who is familiar with Varèse’s wind and percussion works of the 1920s, and with Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, will not find it so difficult to follow her. She likes dissonant chording in the treble register, vigorous use of percussion and often a quasi concertante role for the piano, though without virtuoso display. She places blocks of material next to each other and eschews the developmental processes characteristic of most symphonic music. She saw herself as a spiritual but not a religious composer and her vision is bleak and comfortless.

Symphony 1 stands slightly apart from its successors. It is in three movements, whereas the later ones are all in single movements. It is also the longest, at just under half an hour. The first and third movements are instrumental only and are the only parts of the whole cycle scored for a normal symphony orchestra. The middle movement sets a poem by Gianni Rodari, describing poverty in the USA, which was apparently popular in the USSR. Ustvolskaya said the use of this poem was forced on her; what interested her was the fact that she scored it for two boy trebles, who chant in sharply differentiated sections for each verse – this reminded me of Stravinsky’s Les Noces.

Symphony 2 is subtitled True and Eternal Bliss. Ustvolskaya said was her most important composition. It is a single movement lasting just over twenty minutes. It is scored for six each of flutes, oboes and trumpets, with trombone, tubas, piano, tenor and bass drum and voice, a speaker who must be male. It opens with piano and drums with interjections of dissonant chords from the wind. Later there are blasts from the brass. In the first half the work the speaker says only ‘Ayyy’ and ‘Gospodi’ (Lord) several times. The second half of the work is a slow processional in which the speaker is given further lines, by the eleventh century monk Hermannus Contractus, i.e. Hermann the Cripple. Despite severe disabilities and health problems, Hermann was academically very able. As well as writing numerous technical treatises he also wrote, or is credited with, a number of hymns which are still in use. Ustvolskaya drew on his work in the three middle symphonies.

Symphony 3 is similar but shorter. It is scored for five oboes, five trumpets, trombone, three tubas, drums, piano and five double basses. The speaker reappears, this time in only the first and third sections, with a short invocation, again from Hermannus Contractus. There are four motifs which are varied in rhythm and timbre rather than by traditional harmonies and key changes.

Symphony 4 is unique in using a female singer, a contralto, rather than a male speaker, and there are only three instruments: trumpet, piano and tamtam. This is shorter again, lasting less than seven minutes. The singer is heard throughout, using the same text as in Symphony 4, in dialogue with the trumpet and amidst bangs on the tamtam.

Symphony 5 returns us to a male speaker, this time with an ensemble of five instruments: violin, oboe, trumpet, tuba and percussion. Note that there is no piano, the only symphony to be without one. Instead, the percussionist plays an instrument of Ustvolskaya’s invention, a hollow wooden cube with sides of 43 cm exactly, which is tapped to represent the passing of time. It is like a small version of Mahler’s hammer. The text is the Lord’s Prayer in Russian.

These are strange, bleak but also oddly compelling works. Ustvolskaya is a maverick, of the kind we have seen more often from the USA than Russia – think of Ruggles, Cage or Partch – but her strong spiritual sense sets her rather apart from such composers. Her work belongs to no school and leads nowhere but it has a fierce integrity which is immediately recognizable.

The performances here have been carefully prepared and all credit goes to the performers in their far from easy task. The conductor Christian Karlsen has been making a name for himself with challenging modern scores and he secures convincing performances from his heterogeneous forces. The recording is in SACD; I was listening in ordinary stereo in which it sounded fine, with the voices well balanced against the various instrumental ensembles. The recording comes in a gateleg folder, with the booklet in the first sleeve and the disc in the second. There is a spine, with details of the work. If this is to replace jewel cases I would not mind.

There was a previous recording of Symphonies 2 to 5 many years ago (review) but this is the first version to include all five, in a really long disc, which I should add, played perfectly well on my system. Ustvolskaya is not a composer for the faint-hearted but the adventurous should seek her out and will be rewarded.

Stephen Barber

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