Royal Albert corridor,London
This rarely heard work by Soviet-era composer Galina Ustvolskaya is unusually scored and carries an almost physical charge, dominating the programme
With Valery Gergiev in charge of the London Symphony Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski at the London Philharmonic, and the capital has heard a lot of Soviet-era music recently. Little of that,though, prepared one for the cogent originality of Galina Ustvolskaya’s dramatic Third Symphony at this Prom, or where it was performed by Gergiev with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra,of which he is now the music director. Ustvolskaya’s symphony is one of three idiosyncratically scored single movement symphonies from the 1980s which set searing 11th-century texts from which the subtitle Jesus Messiah, Save Us is drawn. But there is nothing pious or, or to my ears,particularly devout approximately this piece.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com