Galina Ustvolskaya, applauded by Mstislav Rostropovitch and Reinbert de Leeuw in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, January 6, 1996
© Marcel Wolle, De Volkskrant

Galina Ustvolskaya

Updated: May 13, 2001






Born

Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya was born in Petragrad (nowadays Saint Petersburg) on June 17, 1919

Basic biography

From 1937 to 1939 Galina Ustvolskaya studied at the Professional School of Music in Leningrad and from 1947 at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory. Her composition teachers were Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov (1957-1960) and Dimitri Shostakovitch, who greatly admired her music and with whom she apparently had a short affair. After her studies she became a teacher for composition at the same conservatory (1948-1977). Among her students were composers such as Boris Tischchenko and Victor Kissin.
In 1966 she married Konstantin Makukhin. She has lived in Saint Petersburg all of her life and still lives in her tiny apartment in the Prospekt Gagarina. She lives like a hermit, hardly getting out of her house and not in contact with people. She doesn't give interviews and hates pictures being taken. This recent picture is one of the very few ones available. (© Boosey & Hawkes/Sikorski)


On her music

Very few remarks of Ustvolskaya exist on her own music. Famous ones are:
"My music is never chamber music, not even in the case of a solo sonata".
"All who really love my music should refrain from theoretical analysis of it..."

Ustvolskayas music sounds like nothing else. She is a very original composer and it is hard to describe her music in musical terms. The Dutch musicologist Elmer Schönberger calls her The woman with the hammer while the Russian composer Victor Suslin uses the term black hole, a galactic constellation of such an enormous density, absorbing all energy and light in it.
Many of her composition are extremely violent with dynamics up to fffff. But on the other hand she always gives instructions to perform her music espressivo, even with dynamics like this and even if the sound comes from banging a hammer on a wooden box (Composition No.2). The music is rhythmic and many times even ritualistic. One could even find traces of minimal music in her compositions. Some of composition have religious subtitles, but she never was a very religious woman in the usual sense of the word. For her, religion is living together with nature, respecting living creatures and even talking to birds and ants. Her decision to live in seclusion is reflected in her music, which also goes its own way.
In Russia it was very difficult for her to compose her 'own' works. To please the government she wrote film scores and patriotic music, filed in the Other Works section. In many cases her serious works had to wait over 20 years for their first performances.
The first time that her music was played outside of Russia was probably in 1986 at the Wiener Festwochen, and later in 1988 at a festival in Heidelberg, Germany. Her breakthrough in the west came around 1989 with concerts at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, and in 1992 the Festival of Huddersfield. Ustvolskaya seldom visits concerts and has, as far as I know, only been at one concert abroad (January 6, 1996 in Amsterdam, where Octet, Grand Duet, Piano Sonata No.6 and Symphony No.2 were performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Reinbert de Leeuw and Sergei Leiferkus).



List of Works

Works in the catalogue of Hans Sikorski:

Other Works (may be incomplete)

Recordings (all CD, unless stated otherwise)

Links to CD-Labels:





LINKS