Adult trees

The time has truly come to take another look at Sofia Gubaidulina, who died in March. She has found her permanent place in the imaginary museum of music history. But too often Gubaidulina's biography and aesthetics have been reduced to rather simple denominators: the composer who suffered under Russian censorship, the religious brooder and - from the point of view of the progressive parties - the traditional composer who did not embrace progressive compositional techniques from 1950 onwards.

The new Naxos CD Figures of Time paints a different picture. Gubaidulina's 30-minute orchestral work of the same name is just as captivating with its enormous tension and progressiveness as the following piano concerto Introit with a brilliant Alice Di Piazza at the keys. There is no ornamentation or unnecessary gimmickry. Thinned-out, quiet chamber music or solo passages are followed by brusque, expressive orchestral discharges - without giving the impression that the thread has been lost. The words that Gubaidulina herself found are always comprehensible: "There are composers who build their works very consciously, whereas I count myself among those who tend to 'breed' their works. And that is why the entire world I have recorded forms the roots of a tree, as it were, and the work that grows out of it its branches and leaves."

Catchy jazz rhythms, including walking bass, characterize the fun, originally created in 1976. Revue Music for Orchestra and Jazz Band. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek here, not at all the work of a "religious ponderer", but of an unexpectedly open, thoroughly humorous composer. It is true that Gubaidulina's wink with subversive jazz from the West was not at all well received in the Soviet Union - and the empathy of the sensitive conductor Titus Engel, who leads an outstanding Basel Sinfonietta with the participation of the NDR Big Band, is always in tune. In short: a production well worth listening to. On top of that, with many a gain in knowledge!

Figures of Time. Works by Sofia Gubaidulina. Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Big Band; Alice Di Piazza, piano; Titus Engel, conductor. Naxos 8.551487