2023 04 29-30 Ragged Music Festival ENG - Website

Programme notes
the short and utterly unforgettable piece that
opens the program is the most emblematic.
Galina Ustvolskaya, an avant-garde Soviet
composer, was a student of Shostakovich. But
in this strange relationship, it was actually
Shostakovich who saw himself as the student.
He predicted that her work “will be valued
by all who hold truth to be the essential
element of music”. Nicknamed “the lady with
a hammer”, she was a bizarre, uncomfortably
uncompromising character, who sacrificed her
professional life and ambitions to dedicate
herself fully to her artistic principles. She was
aware that her music would be disapproved of
by the Soviet regime, and kept her artistic work
largely private for decades. It is hard to say
whether her oeuvre of 21 pieces is so sparse
due to this or because she would destroy, or
in her own words, “exterminate” any work that
she ultimately didn’t find perfect. ‘There is no
link whatsoever between my music and that
of any other composer, living or dead’, claims
Ustvolskaya in her typical austere manner. She
also discouraged any analysis of her music.
Indeed, it is pointless to try to explain the
impact of her final Piano Sonata. Simply one
of the most singular, astonishing works of art
of any time, this is the music that seems to
transcend its own medium.
6