Sofia Gubaidulina’s religious nature, specifically Russian Orthodox,
finds expression in each of these pieces. Each also makes use of her
much-loved bayan, the Russian button accordion played here with great
virtuosity by Iñaki Alberdi. Kadenza is a solo tour de force; Et exspecto,
based on the closing words of the Creed (‘I look for the resurrection
of the dead and the life of the world to come’) is an impressive
five-movement sonata in which, the booklet-note tells us, the
performer’s interpretation goes, with her encouragement, well beyond the
composer’s notation.
In the other works, much is made of the combination of the accordion sounds and Asier Polo’s cello. With In croce,
a number of cross-like ideas derive from the title – crossing of
registers, crossing of lines and textures and so on – which are
essentially private creative stimuli for the composer. But in the major
work on the record, the half-hour Seven Words, the sentences
spoken by Jesus on the cross are graphically, even fervently implied.
Gubaidulina’s love of short motifs, here often using very close
intervals, produces in her hands music of strong and even painful
intensity, seizing and gripping the attention, sometimes with fiercely
punched chords on the accordion or with soaring harmonics on the cello
that vanish into silence after the final Word. The longest movement is
the central No 4, Jesus’s cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?’, a powerful and deeply affecting invention. This is a remarkable,
compelling work. (John Warrack / Gramophone)
