Sofia Gubaidulina: Viola Concerto [Lawrence Power]

Sofiya Asgátovna Gubaidúlina (b.1931): Viola Concerto (1996)

0:43 Viola Concerto

(39:22 Bis: Imitazione delle campane, by Johann Paul von Westhoff)


Performers:
-Lawrence Power, viola (Antonio Brensi, Bologna, c.1590)
-Ivan Volkov, conductor
-Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya

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"The composition is dedicated to the great violist of our times — Yuri Bashmet. To a performer who possesses astonishing opulence of colors and an enormous range of emotional states — from extreme expression to the most profound mysticism of sound.

But the composition was dedicated not only to the performer, but also to his instrument.

The peculiar mysteriousness and veiled quality of the viola’s timbre has always been something of an acoustic enigma to me, and an object of rapture.

It was precisely this attribute of the viola that induced me to include one additional personage in the list of instruments that would create a contrasting completely different sound dimension from that of the orchestra — a solo quartet tuned a quarter-tone lower.

In order to allow the solo viola to submerge itself, form time to time, in the shadow of this second dimension and then return once again to the brighter dimension of the orchestra (i.e. a quarter-toe higher): the transition from one, real dimension, as it were to another — virtual one.

To accomplish this I chose very simple intervallic relationships: the minor second in one of these dimensions widens into a major second widens into a minor third; the minor third — into a major third; the tritone — into a perfect fifth.

This combining of intervallic pairs brings the musical fabric of the orchestra into a vibrating state, sometimes a glimmering and sometimes a fiery state. And as a consequence of this vibration a specific rhythmic figure emerges which then repeats itself several times and delineated the sections of the form:
Introduction, double expression, development (consisting of 3 episodes), and coda. There are seven sections in all."

— Sofia Gubaidulina