Sofia Gubaidulina

Born in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Sofia Gubaidulina began music lessons at the age of five and wrote her first composition eight years later, before studying in Kazan and at the Moscow Conservatory. Although the head of the latter’s examination panel declared that her attempt to write a symphony was “on the wrong path”, another of its members, Dmitri Shostakovich, subsequently advised her not to deviate from that path. While earning a living as a film composer, she simultaneously developed a distinctive personal language in her concert works which, by expressing her Christian faith, often clashed with the artistic dictates of the Soviet system. Deutsche Grammophon helped secure Gubaidulina’s reputation beyond the Soviet Union in 1989 with the release of Offertorium, her first violin concerto, recorded by Gidon Kremer, for whom it was written. The label subsequently recorded her Viola Concerto and second violin concerto, In tempus praesens, the latter with its dedicatee Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist. In 1992, in search of silence, Gubaidulina moved from Moscow to a small village near Hamburg. Her works of the past thirty years, whether conceived for small or large forces, represent mystical acts of communion with God, one woman’s attempt to comprehend the sounds of the universe. “The task of music,” she notes, “is to create a counter-world that points to a spiritual dimension which lies beyond everyday life.” Photo: Peter Hundert