Here’s an excellent CD for anyone wanting to sample the music of Galina Ustvol’skaya and discover what all the fuss is about. The repertoire offers only a restricted chronological survey (up to 1959), but the performances have the fanatical intensity which is a sine qua non for her peculiar mode of agonized communication.
The Concerto for piano, strings and timpani shows the roots of her style in Prokofiev and Shostakovich – in 1946 Ustvol’skaya was still in Shostakovich’s Leningrad composition class. Pavel Serebryakov gives the instrument an appropriately hard time, knocking it out of tune fairly early in the proceedings, but something of the frisson of playing previously banned music (the premiere was not until 1969) certainly comes across.
By 1950 Ustvol’skaya was writing the kind of stripped-bare textures which Shostakovich recognized as an influence on him. The Octet (for two oboes, four violins, timpani and piano!) is a case in point, and it climaxes in percussive blows of a quite fearsome insistence. Oleg Malov, the one performer closest to Ustvol’skaya over the years, delves deep into the ascetic mysteries of the Third Piano Sonata.
Malov and Oleg Stolpner show what a massively impressive piece the Grand Duet can be in the right hands – as near to a symphony for cello and piano as I’ve ever heard. Once again the piano’s treble register doesn’t survive more than a couple of minutes before becoming seriously detuned, though otherwise the recording quality is fine. Both listed rival performances pale by comparison. Reviewing the Koch version David Nice wrote “I still very much want to heard the Grand Duet as it should be heard”. Here is that chance, not only for the Duet but for all the music on this disc.'