CD ECM Records Galina Ustvolskaya

2013

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - vioara
Markus Hinterhuser - pian
Reto Bieri - clarinet

The unique expressiveness of the work of Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) speaks to the listener with directness and nuanced layers of sound, the powerful, rhythmic stringency of the music testifying to the relentlessness of her vision. Fiercely independent, Ustvolskaya maintained that her music sounded like the work of no other composer, living or dead, and put herself outside all stylistic “schools”. Her work, said Viktor Suslin, has the 'narrowness of a laser beam capable of piercing metal. Its sense of concentration is sometimes ferocious. Entering this sound-world calls for a special kind of commitment and intensity. Patricia Kopatchinskaja (recently described by Strings magazine as “the most exciting violinist in the world”) and Markus Hinterhäuser play the Sonata (1952) and the Duet (1964) for violin and piano, and together with Reto Bieri, the Trio (1949) for clarinet, violin and piano, all recorded in the acoustically superb studio in Lugano which has become one of ECM’s primary locations.

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Ustvolskaya was trying to encourage listeners to hear her music on its own supremely self-assured terms. It’s a tough standard to meet, on a recording — though it’s one that any new album of Ustvolskaya works should attempt to create anyway. This one pulls off that task both in its moments of fireworks and in the sections of eerie quiet. For that, we can thank ECM’s all-star cast. Early in the 2014 season, rising violin star Patricia Kopatchinskaja performed two of the pieces on this album at a rapturously received late-night concert at Berlin’s Philharmonie. Captured in the studio by ECM’s engineers, the animated young Moldavian shows off an even greater range of textures, especially in her approach to the album opener, the composer’s 1952 ‘Sonata for violin and piano.’ […] Her partner in this duo, pianist Markus Hinterhäuser, is just as stellar. The piano part in the Sonata leads him away — as if in a hypnotic trance — from the maniacal edge carved out by the violin writing. But it’s important that the divergent lines for the two instruments not feel alienated from one another. Hinterhäuser, who has recorded Ustvolskaya’s solo piano music, has the right touch, and maintains a subtle accord with the violinist (even when she’s at her most fevered). The pair brings this same understanding to Ustvolskaya’s 1964 ‘Duet for violin and piano’ — a less thrashing piece, but no less haunting. […] Taken as a whole, the lavish gifts of these performers and the excellent production have done this often-unattended composer a dedicated and intense service.
Seth Colter Walls, Wondering Sound