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beg. - reh. 5
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Skills & Techniques: Accuracy, Endurance, High Register, Loud Playing, Rhythms
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Horn 1-6 (F)
Due to restrictions, sheet music for this excerpt is not provided.
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (2011)
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reh. 10 - reh. 15
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Skills & Techniques: Accuracy, Endurance, Finger Fluency, High Register, Loud Playing, Low Register, Slurring Flexibility
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Horn 1-6 (F)
Due to restrictions, sheet music for this excerpt is not provided.
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (2011)
Composer & Composition Information
Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931)
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Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union in 1931. After instruction in 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. The text & image are reprinted from Wise Music Classical where more information about the composer can be found. |
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Feast During a Plague
This work was the result of a commission from the Swedish Concert Institute (Svenska Rikskonserter) for the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet and the Kroumata Percussion Ensemble. These ensembles gave the work its first performance in Stockholm on 12th February 1994.
The combination of these two ensembles as such gave me the idea of providing the piece with a sort of musical-theatrical action: expectation and meeting.
I had two different processes of sound generation at my disposal: the most immediate process (the breathing of the musicians on their wind instruments) and an indirect one (sound production by means of drumsticks, bows, rubber bouncing balls etc. on percussion instruments).
In spite of all the contrasts between these two processes, there is at the same time the possibility of compromise between them, the possibility of meeting at a point of common ground. I took this possibility as the basic idea of the compositional development: what seems to be a similar sound (a 'saxophone pizzicato' is reminiscent of the sound of temple blocks) gradually develops into an obvious contrast. After we have passed through a 'dangerous region', we finally arrive at a genuine, natural commonality of the instruments, at a 'consonance of tonal colour': saxophone harmonies in dialogue with flexatones and suspended cymbals, both played with double-bass bows. Unpredictable chordal mixtures of adjacent notes from the spectrum of tinny sounds are produced both by the threedimensional metal plates of certain percussion instruments and also by the curved shapes of the saxophone reeds.
The text is written by & reprinted from Sofia Gubaidulina (Boosey and Hawkes) where more information about the composition can be found.
The combination of these two ensembles as such gave me the idea of providing the piece with a sort of musical-theatrical action: expectation and meeting.
I had two different processes of sound generation at my disposal: the most immediate process (the breathing of the musicians on their wind instruments) and an indirect one (sound production by means of drumsticks, bows, rubber bouncing balls etc. on percussion instruments).
In spite of all the contrasts between these two processes, there is at the same time the possibility of compromise between them, the possibility of meeting at a point of common ground. I took this possibility as the basic idea of the compositional development: what seems to be a similar sound (a 'saxophone pizzicato' is reminiscent of the sound of temple blocks) gradually develops into an obvious contrast. After we have passed through a 'dangerous region', we finally arrive at a genuine, natural commonality of the instruments, at a 'consonance of tonal colour': saxophone harmonies in dialogue with flexatones and suspended cymbals, both played with double-bass bows. Unpredictable chordal mixtures of adjacent notes from the spectrum of tinny sounds are produced both by the threedimensional metal plates of certain percussion instruments and also by the curved shapes of the saxophone reeds.
The text is written by & reprinted from Sofia Gubaidulina (Boosey and Hawkes) where more information about the composition can be found.
Notable Performances/Recordings:
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra (2014)
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (2006)
Philadelphia Orchestra (2006)
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra (2014)
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (2006)
Philadelphia Orchestra (2006)