Goeyvaerts String Trio String Trios from the East by Gubaidulina, Kancheli, Knaifel and Paiberdin

Goeyvaerts String Trio String Trios from the East BY GUBAIDULINA, KANCHELI, KNAIFEL AND PAIBERDIN 1 Goeyvaerts String Trio String Trios from the East BY GUBAIDULINA, KANCHELI, KNAIFEL AND PAIBERDIN Kristien Roels violin Kris Matthynssens viola Pieter Stas cello Alexander Knaifel voice CD 1 CD 2 SOFIA GUBAIDULINA (1931) Alexander Knaifel reads... String Trio (1988) [1] Prayer of one going to church 0:55 dedicated to the memory of Boris Pasternak [1] Part 1 6:55 Alexander Knaifel reads poems by F. Tyutchev (1803-1873) [2] Part 2 6:26 dedicated to E.F. (Elena Frolova) [3] Part 3 9:50 [2] No.1 1:13 [3] No.2 0:39 OLEG PAIBERDIN (1971) [4] No.3 0:30 [4] Organum A-nn-A (2000) 12:15 [5] No.4 0:35 [6] No.5 0:25 GIYA KANCHELI (1935) [7] No.6 0:43 [5] Time... and again (1997/1998) 23:18 [6] Rag-gidon-time (1995/1999) 4:08 ALEXANDER KNAIFEL (1943) [8] E.F. and three visiting cards of the poet (2008) 16:24 total time 62:53 total time 21:26 4 5 Grains of Sand towards sound – we are not talking here about minimalism, but rather All the music on this recording has at a kind of maximalism, expressed least one thing in common: it seeks through limited musical means that to find the oak tree in the acorn, or can initially give the illusion of being William Blake’s “world in a grain of minimal (a world in a grain of sand) sand”. One might almost write “grain – corresponds to the extreme, often of sound”, because all these works fragile, states of spirit with which begin with very little – a note or two, they deal, and which could only have something not far removed from been arrived at by musicians with silence, a seed that gives rise to an such a background. Even the young- entire, and frequently paradoxical, est composer represented here, world of consonance and dissonance, Oleg Paiberdin, born in 1971, with monologue and dialogue (and, here, all the vastly increased opportunities trialogue), growth and retrenchment, that this implies, could hardly have height and depth. emerged from a western European milieu. This is not a question of ec- Another common element between centricity (which in any case requires these works is that they were all writ- the definition of a necessarily artifi- ten by musicians from different parts cial “centre”), but rather of a shared of what used to be the Soviet Union: experience – experienced in different Knaifel and Paiberdin are Russian, ways, to be sure – that in a very par- Gubaidulina also, though of Tatar ticular way delineates and shapes the heritage, and Kancheli is Georgian. significance of the musical gestures Their highly economical attitude (rather than necessarily the stylistic 6 7 procedures) employed, reflecting the kind is perfectly understandable, independently but within the context process that in just a little over one difficulties of artistic creation in such because this idea of re-ligio is quite of that “threeness”. Nobody aware minute takes the listener towards a society and the great value placed a concrete determination. This link- of the composer’s spiritual concerns the extremes of height and depth, on, and the significance invested in, ing between themselves of different would fail also to see here a reference and of gestural rhetoric familiar from the very smallest elements. elements leading them towards a to the Trinity, three-in-one, but Gubaidulina’s universe. centre is a typically musical idea and as always with Gubaidulina, she Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) is pro- is also an existentially tragic idea that appreciates the essentially abstract Cholopova also noted an unusual foundly aware of the consequences represents the substance of the entire nature of music and fully realizes that element in the work, that of dance; of the smallest gesture, in both spiritual world.”1 such triple symbolism may also mean throughout the work’s three move- musical and spiritual terms: “If [...] we many other things at the same time. ments there are stylized dance speak of a religious idea that is to This linking of different elements The musicologist Valentina Cholopova rhythms and sudden suggestions of be found outside history, we come leading towards a centre is precisely has astutely observed that “The three ecstatic choreographed movement closer to a cosmic concept which descriptive of Gubaidulina’s String parts of the Trio are, as always, united or wild abandon; indeed, she refers seems to me important not only for Trio, written in 1988 and premiered by a hidden musical ‘subject’, which to a slow, almost frozen, sequence human mentality, but also for the by members of the Moscow String transmits to the work a compactness from the first movement as “a kind of development of the world. Without Quartet at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. deriving from the initial idea and seraphic dance”; another passage, in these ideas one cannot live, because Its scoring is just one element of the the semantic symbology of singular the third movement, could be seen they are the roots of existence. […] work’s emphatic “threeness”: it is musical ‘gestures’.”2 Indeed, the work as its total opposite, something far Often religion is defined literally as in three (untitled) movements, and begins with a unity, on iterations of wilder and earthier. There is also re-ligio [re-connecting], or as the each instrument is at the same time the note B spread between the three vast range of techniques and styles re-establishment of communication, a member of a trio but also very instruments, that quickly disintegrates of writing employed, with liberal use and for us musicians an idea of this definitely an individual, speaking into those singular gestures, a of col legno (playing with the wood 1. Enzo Restagno, ed., Gubajdulina, Turin: EDT, 1991, 55. Author’s translation 2. In Restagno, op.cit., 35. Author’s translation 8 9 of the bow), pizzicato and harmonics this piece a number of times, which Time... and again is utterly character- upheaval in his native Georgia and and, not least, within the overall has resulted in some small alterations istic in this: when unexpected “music his self-imposed exile is brought, structure, many sudden changes of over the course of rehearsals. box” melodies or reminiscences of willingly or unwillingly, to bear upon texture and dynamic. The virtuosic the baroque appear, they do not the search for it. This is why the title of quality of the music is also character- As with Gubaidulina, in Kancheli’s seem like intruders requesting rec- Kancheli’s work is so important: time istic, and suggests not only a striving work there is an intense exploration of onciliation with the alien landscape is what modifies our views, even if we for heaven, but the quality of being timbre, and a consistent use of timbre around them; rather, one has the choose to close our eyes, as Kancheli anchored in the earth; indeed, the as musical material in its own right, as impression that the composer has did in his work from 1992-94 Abii ne music ends in a tone almost of irrita- well as an interest in extremities. In simply slightly “retuned” his inner ear viderem, “I turned away that I might tion, as the violin struggles with a his case, these extremities are most to capture these ghostly shards of a not see.” But time is also not static repeated figure possibly suggesting frequently of dynamics, a characteristic semi-forgotten past, these chips of – Time... and again – and therefore celestial ecstasy over a ‘cello drone, already evident in his cycle of seven granite, that come floating down to we are forced to look once more, to and the viola’s pizzicato meanderings symphonies, written between 1967 their new, true home. attempt discern and understand the end in emphatically noisy twangs, and 1986, but also of styles, though absence at the centre. as though the effort were too much. there is never any use of Schnittke’s And truth is the essence of this work: “polystylism”. Quite the opposite: it is prefaced by a quotation from The tiny Rag-Gidon-Time (1995) Giya Kancheli (b. 1935) wrote every note in Kancheli’s music seems the Epistle of St Paul to the Galatians similarly almost freezes the clock, but Time... and again in 1996, for Gidon to have been hewn laboriously from (1:20): “Now the things which I write not entirely. Snippets of ragtime-style Kremer and Oleg Maisenberg, to a a solid block of granite. Or one might unto you, behold, before God, I melody fly off the violin like sparks, commission from the Barbican Centre, say that that we are left with what is cut lie not.” It has been said that truth while the accompaniment is jerky, London. The version for string trio away from the granite, each glistening may be found in simplicity, but for sporadic, as though its support of was made for members of Kremerata chip organically related to the other, Kancheli, simplicity is a complicated the air-filled melodic line were only Baltica when Maisenberg broke his however different the facets of expres- matter. Complicated because conditional. It is worth remembering arm in an accident; the Goeyvaerts sion they show. What we discern in the simplicity is not something static; that Scott Joplin wrote “It is never Trio has worked with the composer on middle is an aching emptiness. the composer’s experience of the right to play Ragtime fast.” Kancheli 10 11 has not only taken Joplin at his word, ploying the ternary rhythm so charac- Goeyvaerts String Trio advice of such eminent musicians as but almost dissected the entire teristic of organa, a result of the medi- Alexander Ivashkin, Giya Kancheli, musical mechanism that makes up a aeval system of rhythmic modes.

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