All the Gubaidulina works on both these discs reveal a knife-edge judgement of the balance between substance and effect, an infallible sense of structure and an understanding of each instrument's possibilities, whether the composer chooses to exploit them to the full (as in the case of both issues' star player - the cello on Koch, the classical accordion on BIS), or simply to let the instrument play a selective role in the proceedings. I'm not sure quite what is meant by a musical structure "based on the shape of the cross" - a poem like Herbert’s Easter Wings speaks for itself on the printed page, but neither in the score nor the performance does this aspect of Gubaidulina's ambitious work for cello and organ become clear - but In croce has the makings of a masterpiece all the same. Few listeners can fail to be riveted by the progress from an ear-tickling start, with the organ doodling seraphically around a high E and the cello struggling to break free of the lower register (hints of several later Schnittke works to come), to a semi-notated central conflict and on to some of the most inspired yet simple pages in contemporary Russian music - a chromatic weave of newly strengthened cello versus impotent organ as intense as anything in Tavener's The Protecting Veil; characteristically, Gubaidulina can hardly leave it at that.

Beiser's full, rich tone is well to the fore in the recording - it has to be, given the organ's fortissimo outburst halfway through, a potential nightmare to balance in a live performance - and being virtually alongside the cello in the Preludes helps us to come closer to this emotional, rigorously structured investigation of the instrument's range and techniques; there is astonishing resonance in the bottom register for the Legato-Staccato Prelude (No. 2), and the ricocheting No. 4 is sensual sound made palpable.

Alas that after such near-ideal performances Gallina Ustvolskaya, Gubaidulina's senior by 12 years, and a tenderly regarded pupil of Shostakovich, should have such a poor deal: not in terms of the choice of work, for Grand (Bolshoi) Duet can hold its own against the stranger meeting of In croce. What Beiser and her pianist, Christopher Oldfather, have done is to go through the score virtually striking out the more extreme dynamics; and since the piece depends on its relentless smatterings of ffff throughout the first four movements in order for the (mostly) quiescent finale to make its effect, the point is lost - especially in the wild fourth movement, here played pointedly at mf throughout. When there is no wildness, there can be no transcendence; and though Beiser offers some highly expressive legato playing in the long fifth movement, it's not quite as withdrawn as Ustvolskaya asks until the closing stages of the work. In other words, I still very much want to hear the Grand Duet as it should be heard.

A very different route is taken to a similarly ambiguous truce in Silenzio, the first work on the BIS disc: this time a Webern-like play on silence rather than a full-frontal assault, with the accordion blocking any fuller articulation from the violin and cello until another long, slow finale which ends alarmingly with the accordion's malignant lower-register heavings. The judderings and note flappings that launch De profundis are even more terrifying, and that's only the start; thereafter Geir Draugsvoll takes us on a chastening and never merely virtuosic tour of the accordion's full potential, realized by Gubaidulina in close association with the master of the instrument, Friedrich Lips. The wonder of it is that she could have found, and extracted, fascination enough to stretch to two full-scale solos. Et expecto, though it begins as an exercise in Schnittke-like 'polystylism', turns out to be the later composition, proceeds still deeper than De profundis and makes a perfect companion-piece; both can be rewardingly absorbed at a single sitting.

The most recent work, In Erwartung, explores the mysteries of another ensemble rich in potential, namely saxophone quartet and an exotic array of percussion. First impressions are of an all-too-common lingua franca in contemporary writing for percussion, but as always there turns out to be an ongoing purpose behind Gubaidulina's increasingly rich mosaic of rhythmic and melodic patterns. The sound quality is as hypnotizingly refined as the performance.

DN
(From: Gramophone, November 1995)