Ustvolskaya: Composition No. 2 'dies irae'

At the beginning of her career, Galina Ustvolskaya, today known as one of the greatest female composers of Russia, was regarded as an outsider in the Association of Composers of the former USSR. The fact that she mainly composed for the desk drawer, however, was not only due to the repressive ignorance surrounding her, but also due to creative psychological reasons: "My work routine is considerably different from that of other composers. I write when I get into a state of grace. Afterwards, the work is left to rest for a while, and when its time has come, I will release it. When its time doesn't come, I destroy it."

'Grand Duet' for cello and piano (1959) is one of the pieces created past politically enforced concessions – at that time without any prospect of a performance and a publishing house. This is why it could not be played until many years later. After a creative hiatus of several years, the first work created was the three-part series ‘Compositions’. To each of the three compositions, Ustvolskya added a subtitle from parts of the Latin Mass Liturgy: 'Composition No. 2' (1972/73) received the addition of ‘Dies irae’ – just one example of the affinity of her music to spirituality: "Although my works are not religious in the liturgical sense, they are filled with a religious spirit."

Ustvolskaya's six piano sonatas composed between the end of her studies with Shostakovich in 1947 and 1988 consist mainly of one-part sequences of tones or powerful clusters of a rather percussive character – like her 'Sonata No. 6'. However, the piano appears in Ustvolskaya's entire oeuvre and can be seen as the alter ego of her identity as a composer.

In this 4 SACD set, NEOS music presents the first Salzburg Biennale, the new contemporary music festival which took place over four weekends in March 2009. The festival brought about many musical encounters and the collection includes works by Cage, Furrer, Hosokawa, Huber, Kurtág, Ligeti, Reich, Sotelo, Ustvolskaya and Yeznikian.