Word: gubaidulina
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Dates: during 1985-1985
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...first performance by Pianist Peter Serkin and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Conductor Simon Rattle. Stephen Albert's ambitious RiverRun debuted at the Kennedy Center in Washington, under Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich with the National Symphony. In Manhattan, Violinist Gidon Kremer played the U.S. premiere of Soviet Composer Sofia Gubaidulina's knotty Offertorium with the New York Philharmonic, while across the East River, the Brooklyn Philharmonic presented the first indoor performance of Tobias Picker's frisky Keys to the City, written in 1983 to celebrate the Brooklyn Bridge's centenary. And Pittsburgh got the first hearing of Ned Rorem's rawboned...
...Gubaidulina's Offertorium (1979-80) uses the theme of Bach's Musical Offering as the takeoff point for a complex violin concerto that lasts about 35 minutes. Atonal passages mingle freely with tonal ones as the theme is atomized and then reconstructed in reverse; the modern orchestrational device of flutter-tonguing for flutes and brass is complemented by traditionally virtuosic writing for the solo violinist. Gubaidulina, 53, also evokes her Russian predecessors Stravinsky and Prokofiev, most strikingly in a passage of glissandi string harmonics that recalls The Firebird. By Western standards, Offertorium may be tame, but given the governmental restrictions...