Sofia Gubaidulina: The Canticle of the Sun

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

Despite...distinguished competition, Nicolas Altstaedt is fairly mesmerising in this new version, and the Riga Chamber Choir is extremely clear in its diction and alive to the work's mercurial... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2012, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 16th Jan 2012
Catalogue No: 4764662
Label: ECM
Series: New Series
Length: 69 minutes

Gubaidulina: The Lyre Of Orpheus

Work length23:40

Album only

$2.05

Gidon Kremer (violin), Marta Sudraba (cello)
Kremerata Baltica
Recorded: 2006-07-16
Recording Venue: Lockenhaus Festival, Burgenland

Gubaidulina: The Canticle of the Sun

Work length45:23

Album only

$8.20

Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Andrei Pushkarev (percussion), Rihards Zaļupe (percussion), Rostislav Krimer (celesta)
Chamber Choir Kamēr...
Māris Sirmais
Recorded: 2010-07-10
Recording Venue: Lockenhaus Festival, Burgenland

Glorification Of The Creator, And His Creations: The Sun And The Moon

Track length10:12

Album only

$2.05

Glorification Of The Creator, The Maker Of The Four Elements: Air, Water, Fire And Earth

Track length13:19

Album only

$2.05

Glorification Of Life

Track length14:29

Album only

$2.05

Glorification Of Death

Track length7:23

Album only

$2.05

About
Reviews
Explore

About

Sofia Gubaidulina’s 80th birthday in October 2011 generated much press coverage around the world, appropriately stressing the uniqueness and the variety of her compositional approaches. Both are in evidence on this album of recordings from the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. Gidon Kremer is the soloist and Kremerata Baltica the ensemble on the world premiere recording of The Lyre of Orpheus, dedicated to the memory of Gubaidulina’s daughter, while cellist Nicolas Altstaedt takes the solo role in The Canticle of the Sun, which the composer wrote in tribute to Mstislav Rostropovich on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1997.

Gidon Kremer has long been a committed advocate of Gubaidulina’s work, and the composer has praised the way the violinist seems to unleash music from the soul. In The Lyre of Orpheus, a work of austere beauty and raw lyricism, violin, string orchestra and percussion intermingle in new ways. At a subterranean level, the piece is also an exploration into acoustic phenomena and the physics of sound, with pulsating difference tones part of its underlying structures. It was recorded in 2006, a month after Kremer gave the first performance.

The Canticle of the Sun, recorded in 2010, revisits the celebrated piece composed for Mstislav Rostropovich for his 70th birthday. Rostropovich’s famously sunny disposition was an inspiration, by association prompting Gubaidulina to set St Francis of Assissi’s “Canticle of the Sun” for choir. In his ECM recording debut, the young German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, a current BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, takes on the highly expressive lead role. A further, timely, Lockenhaus connection here: in 2012 Altsteadt takes over from Kremer as the new director of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival.

Reviews

June 2012

Despite...distinguished competition, Nicolas Altstaedt is fairly mesmerising in this new version, and the Riga Chamber Choir is extremely clear in its diction and alive to the work's mercurial changes of textures and mood...Kremer's performance [of The Lyre] seems ideal.

May 2012

these are attractive pieces, in the obvious sense of beguiling the ear but also for their capacity to hold attention and draw the listener into her inventive world...These are extraordinary works from an extraordinary and very compelling musical personality.

29th January 2012

[The Lyre of Orpheus] is a powerful single movement for solo violin, string orchestra and percussion. The violinist Gidon Kremer and his ensemble give it with expressive intensity... [The Canticle of the Sun] is a restrained but joyous concerto...It is above all poetic, with starbursts of sound.

20th January 2012

this album is testament to the sensitive individualism of Sofia Gubaidulina... Gubaidulina's characteristic use of unusual percussion...reaches further extremes in her setting of St Francis's "Canticle of the Sun" when cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, having de-tuned his instrument to its lowest possible note, eventually abandons it to bow first a drum, then a flexatone device. Strange, but beautiful.

Sofia Gubaidulina: The Canticle of the Sun

Downloads

Contents

Download queue