VYACHESLAV ARTYOMOV, SOFIA GUBAIDULINA, VICTOR SUSLIN: Astreja

Vyacheslav Artyomov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Victor Suslin

Astreja

© 2003 V.Artyomov

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Spontaneous improvisation by academic composers

notes

Astreja is a rare, almost unique example of a group of composers – famous in their own right - impovising together, creating music that none of them could write (produce) by him – or herself.

Astreja – a group consisting of the leading composers of academic avantgarde from the then Soviet Union improvising with rarely used Russian, Caucasian and Central-Asian folk instruments. - was founded in 1975 by Vyacheslav Artiomov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Victor Suslin. This is the original round-up. Later Mark Pekarsky and Valentina Ponomareva briefly joined the group while V.Artyomov went on to pursue other projects.

VYACHESLAV ARTYOMOV (b.1940) graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied composition with Nikolai Sidelnikov in 1968. An examination of his music reveals an interest which ranges from the archaic ("Invocations", "Totem") and Christian motifs ("Requiem", "Ave, Maria") to Eastern meditation ("Awakening", "A Symphony of Elegies", "Moonlight Dreams"). Artyomov considers himself an adherent of the romantic tradition. For Artyomov all elements of musical language attend to one main purpose - penetration into the deepest levels of an inner world, discovering of the "Other World" in oneself. The process of obtaining knowledge of this world can be a way of the joint moral perfecting of both composer and listener: Artyomov believes in the transfiguration of the created world through music.

His music has been performed by conductors - G.Rozhdestvensky, D.Kitayenko, M.Rostropovich, V.Fedoseyev, T.Minbayev, V.Kozhin, S.Sondetskis, M.Pletnev, F.Glushchenko, Virko Baley, pianists - S.Bunin, D.Alekseyev, A.Diyev, violinists - L.Isakadze, O.Krysa, T.Grindenko, V.Igolinsky, organists - O.Yanchenko, A.Semionov, singers - L.Davidova, L.Piatigorskaya, M.Mescheriakova, N.Lee, Ye.Brilyova, L.Petrova.

Ten TV films including full "Requiem", the cycle "Symphony of the Way" and the premiere in London were made in 1992-1995 about Artyomov and his music.

SOFIA GUBAIDULINA was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union in 1931. After studying piano and composition at the Kazan Conservatory, she studied composition with Nikolai Peiko at the Moscow Conservatory, pursuing graduate studies there under Vissarion Shebalin. Until 1992, she lived in Moscow. Since then, she has made her primary residence in Germany, outside Hamburg.
Gubaidulina's compositional interests have been stimulated by the tactile exploration and improvisation with rare Russian, Caucasian, and Asian folk and ritual instruments collected by the "Astreia" ensemble, of which she was a co-founder, by the rapid absorption and personalization of contemporary Western musical techniques (a characteristic, too, of other Soviet composers of the post-Stalin generation including Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke), and by a deep-rooted belief in the mystical properties of music.
Her uncompromising dedication to a singular vision did not endear her to the Soviet musical establishment, but her music was championed in Russia by a number of devoted performers including Vladimir Tonkha, Friedrich Lips, Mark Pekarsky, and Valery Popov. The determined advocacy of Gidon Kremer, dedicatee of Gubaidulina's masterly violin concerto, Offertorium, helped bring the composer to international attention in the early 1980s. Gubaidulina is the author of symphonic and choral works, two cello concerti, a viola concerto, four string quartets, a string trio, works for percussion ensemble, and many works for nonstandard instruments and distinctive combinations of instruments. Her scores frequently explore unconventional techniques of sound production.
Since 1985, when she was first allowed to travel to the West, Gubaidulina's stature in the world of contemporary music has skyrocketed. She has been the recipient of prestigious commissions from the Berlin, Helsinki, and Holland Festivals, the Library of Congress, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and many other organizations and ensembles. The major triumph of the recent past was the premiere in 2002 of the monumental two-part cycle, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to St. John, commissioned respectively by the International Bachakademie Stuttgart and the Norddeutschen Rundfunk, Hamburg. Gubaidulina made her first visit to North America in 1987 as a guest of Louisville's "Sound Celebration." She has returned many times since as a featured composer of festivals - Boston's "Making Music Together" (1988), Vancouver's "New Music" (1991), Tanglewood (1997) - and for other performance milestones. From the retrospective concert by Continuum (New York, 1989) to the world premieres of commissioned works - Pro et Contra by the Louisville Orchestra (1989), String Quartet No. 4 by the Kronos Quartet (New York, 1994), Dancer on a Tightrope by Robert Mann and Ursula Oppens (Washington, DC, 1994), the Viola Concerto by Yuri Bashmet with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Kent Nagano (1997), Two Paths ("A Dedication to Mary and Martha") for two solo violas and orchestra, by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Masur (1999), and Light of the End by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Masur (2003) - the accolades of American critics have been ecstatic. Eagerly anticipated for 2006 is the premiere of a new orchestral work jointly commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to be conducted in Philadelphia by Sir Simon Rattle.
Gubaidulina is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg, of the Royal Music Academy in Stockholm and of the German order "Pour le mérite." She has been the recipient of the Prix de Monaco (1987), the Premio Franco Abbiato (1991), the Heidelberger Künstlerinnenpreis (1991), the Russian State Prize (1992), and the SpohrPreis (1995). Her most recent awards include the prestigious Praemium Imperiale in Japan (1998), the Sonning Prize in Denmark (1999), the Polar Music Prize in Sweden (2002), the Great Distinguished Service Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2002) and the Living Composer Prize of the Cannes Classical Awards in 2003. In 2004, she was elected as a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Her music is now generously represented on compact disc, and Gubaidulina has been honored twice with the coveted Koussevitzky International Recording Award. Major releases have appeared on the DG, Chandos, Philips, Sony Classical, BIS, and Berlin Classics labels.


VICTOR SUSLIN was born on 13 June 1942. He belongs to a generation of Russian composers wich, as a result of the Second World War, is in fact rather small in numerical terms. Although it has much in common with the prewar generation (Pärt, Gubaidulina, Schnittke, Denisov), there are important and obvious differences. For example, the atmosphere at the conservatories in the first half of the 1960s was quite different to the one which had prevailed a decade earlier. Whereas it would be true to say that the “thaw” initiated byKrushchev was both uncertain and deceptive, it nonetheless led to a flowering of the arts
and a greater open-mindedness in cultural life. And it certainly widened the student’s horizons. Composers born in the 1930s, such as Volkonsky, Denisov, Silvestrov,
Gubaidulina and Schnittke, profited more from the thaw than those who were about ten years younger. The former, who were all about 30, were now able to secure performances
of their first important works, and to make a name for themselves abroad.
In this respect life was more difficult for Suslin and his generation. On the one hand he was fortunate enough to have had excellent teachers – he studied composition with Nikolai
Peyko, who had previously taught Sofia Gubaidulina, and the piano with the distinguished pianist Anatoly Vedernikov. On the other hand his career as a composer began at the very
moment when the political and cultural “thaw” was abruptly terminated by Brezhnev in October 1964. The consequences of this soon became apparent. For example, it proved
impossible to obtain an orchestra for his graduation exercise, the piano concerto (1966).
Music of this kind suddenly began to be frowned upon. Subsequently, in the 1960s and 1970s, many planned performances of New Music were banned. This policy was applied to Suslin’s works just as much as to those of his senior colleagues, and in the end he decided to
emigrate.
Suslin’s character is lyrical by nature, and not dramatic. His music avoids coarse contrasts and cheap dramaturgical effects, and, although most of his works have a programmatic
title, he rejects the use of literary models and what might be called ‘musical journalism’. For this reason his music does not fit in with the tradition established by Shostakovich.
Although Suslin does not have an unduly long list of works to his credit, his music is characterized by its diversity. He never repeats himself, and, in terms of compositional
technique, is quite clearly concerned to impart individuality to each new work. His broadly-based expressive range reaches from ecstatic warmth (Patience, Leb’ wohl, Poco a poco II, In My End is My Beginning) to fervent meditation and lyricism (Trio-Sonate,
Mitternachtsmusik, Le deuil blanc), wit and humour (Sinfonia piccola, Drei Chöre nach Daniil Charms, Gioco appassionato, Terrarium), and to works with mystical and magical qualities (Chanson contre raison). Suslin has never made specific use of texts from the liturgy, though some of his pieces have religious connotations. For example, Lamento for Organ is a work which demonstrates that a musical structure can in fact have an intrinsically symbolic meaning.
In his early works Suslin developed a language that is very much his own. he rejected minimalism and the use of polystylistics, basing his music instead on pluralistic material, and not on stylistic pluralism. Perfect consonances coexist with twelve-note complexes,
which can be coloured in a large variety of way (for example, structures consisting of concatenations of identical intervals, or the use of major and minor chords whithin the framework of twelve-note logic), controlled aleatory techniques, microtones which result in a ‘non-Euclidean’ modality (for example, the resolution of the triton in quarter-tone steps to the perfect fifth or perfect fourth – or the transformation of a large interval into a small one, and vice versa). Furthermore, Suslin’s music also demonstrates his dislike for the allinterval
row (with its characteristic statistical entropy) and his preference for unvarying and self-contained symmetrical rows with the smallest possible number of intervals.
Another feature of Suslin’s music is that he fails to draw a clear distinction between chamber music and symphonic works. Thus it would be difficult to describe pieces such as
the Sonata for Violoncello and Percussion or Le deuil blanc as chamber music. Suslin likes to join several movements into a single unit, and is not particularly interested in the dialectics of sonata form. When devising his clear and perceivable structures he sometimes relies on Oriental concepts of form, though this is something the listener hardly ever notices. Suslin’s polyphonic technique has nothing in common with academic polyphony or linear twelve-note composition (which is just as academic). In contrast to this, his music often makes use of a very personal kind of layered polyphony consisting of major and minor chords which are impelled by “twelve-note logic”.
Suslin also believes that timbre and colour are important structural elements. in this respect his lenghty collaboration with the composers S. Gubaidulina and V. Artyomov in the ASTREYA improvisation ensemble founded in 1975 was of especial significance. For a number of years it gave Suslin the chance to become acquainted with a large number of standard and exotic instruments. In the course of his research he devised new ways of playing percussion and string instruments, and used these techniques for the first time in some of his works.
Suslin’s works continue to be played in many different countries. Since 1979 they have been performed at contemporary music festivals in Paris, Cologne, Tokyo, London, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Davos, Zurich, Moscow and St Petersburg. This is partly due to the fact that a number of famous musicians such as Kremer, Geringas, Lyubimov, Grindenko, Tonkha, Pekarsky and Herz have become ardent champions of his music.
Suslin has also directed radio workshops (WDR, NDR), and given masterclasses (for example, at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1993, in Eesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic in
1996, and in Avignon 1998).

From Jürgen Köchel article (http://www.sikorski.de/content/downloads/suslin-pdf.pdf)


During his long career trombonist MILES ANDERSON (who plays with Vyacheslav Artiomov on the track 3 of the CD) has performed in a variety of musical genres working with leaders as diverse as John Williams and John Cage, and Pierre Boulez and Les Brown.He has performed as a soloist in the United States, Mexico, Europe, Australia and Japan, and was the first brass player to receive a Solo Recitalists' Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Today, Anderson is a performer/ composer with electric violinist, Erica Sharp. Both are resident musicians with McCaleb Dance, and since 1986 have collaborated with Nancy McCaleb, one of San Diego's most celebrated choreographers. Anderson's music joins the possibilities of recent music technology with traditional acoustic instruments.

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