Day 338
Galina Ustvolskaya: Symphony No. 5 Amen
Cantata Profana
I came across Ustvolskaya after watching a fascinating and typically provocative review of a recording of her complete symphonies by Dave Hurwitz on YouTube. Who could not want to listen to some of her music after hearing it described as Allan Petterson meets Webern! Conveniently, and this is one of the reasons I chose it, is that Ustvolskaya now completes my musical alphabet. I have at least one composer for each letter now.
This symphony is in fact a fairly compact (15 mins) chamber piece scored for trumpet, tuba, violin, oboe, wooden cube(!) and narrator. It is austere and largely consists of short motifs rather than long melodic phrases. I found it surprisingly compelling. I can say that I really understood what was going on all of the time - the reciter is intoning the Lord's Prayer in Russian against the backdrop of the instrumentalist. The wooden cube is a large hollow box beaten with hammers - it is quite an impressive percussive effect. It was not in fact as depressing as 'Allan Petterson meets Webern' suggests that it might be. Certainly it didn't raise the spirits, but in its way is was impressive and haunting.
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