Galina Ustvolskaya: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 - 6 Antonii Baryshevskyi

• Galina Ustvolskaya (1919 - 2006):
• 1 Sonata No. 1: I. 01:21
• 2 Sonata No. 1: II. 01:28
• 3 Sonata No. 1: III. 03:29
• 4 Sonata No. 1: IV. 03:37
• 5 Sonata No. 2: I. 03:25
• 6 Sonata No. 2: II. 06:46
• 7 Sonata No. 3 18:27
• 8 Sonata No. 4: I. 01:53
• 9 Sonata No. 4: II. 02:15
• 10 Sonata No. 4: III. 01:01
• 11 Sonata No. 4: IV. 05:29
• 12 Sonata No. 5 19:25
• 13 Sonata No. 6 07:30
• Total Runtime 01:16:06

Info for Galina Ustvolskaya: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 - 6

„What we are about to hear is not a performance by conceptual artists who have decided to set a discarded Bechstein or Blüthner on fire – no, we are going to hear piano pieces by Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya.“ The words of the renowned Dutch music critic quoted above offer a precise, vivid description of the musical output of one of the most enigmatic composers of our time.

It is hard to apply the usual musicological jargon to Ustvolskaya‘s music. She was not the apocalypse of the 20th century; she was its echo. Thanks to providence, she was never sent to one of Stalin’s concentration camps: destiny allowed her to live in seclusion as an artist never blinded by hopes of success. In choosing solitude, she was by no means a Romantic “hero” fleeing from reality, overtly proud of fulfilling a mission or playing an exclusive role. Her seclusion, instead, was the bitter loneliness of a noble soul trembling in view of the world’s utter imperfection. She mourns for it. She prays for us. Ustvolskaya chose to live the life of a hermit. Contact with other human beings was something she often found difficult – even with musicians who really liked her. As she put it herself: “My sincerest wish would be to crawl into a barrel like Diogenes and just live secluded therein. That would be the best option for my life.................“. (Excerpts from the liner notes by Iosif Raiskin)

„Markus Hinterhäuser’s complete Ustvolskaya piano sonata cycle, recorded in 1998, never did quite cut the mustard like Marianne Schroeder’s 1994 Hat Hut performances. And then, in 2006, Sabine Liebner moved Ustvolskaya interpretation to new heights with a cycle for Neos that felt intelligently integrated and sounded brazenly strepitous. So whither Hinterhäuser now?

He remains, I’m afraid to say, a definite third choice – never a disastrous, confiscate-his-instrument third, but his cycle has simply been superseded by subsequent events. Liebner never mistakes Ustvolskaya’s austere, stentorian sound world for simple greyness but Hinterhäuser sometimes slips perilously close. Through sheer physical insistence, in Liebner’s hands the Third Sonata (1952) is shell-shocked by its own existence; melodic fragments cut like serrated knives, obsessively struck chains of cluster formations make the piano resonate like you never heard before. The surface of Hinterhäuser’s performance hints at those possibilities but it’s neat and chanceless.

The Sixth Sonata (1988) reduces Ustvolskaya’s now-familiar trademark gestures to an archetypal essence. In Liebner, ghosts of sonatas past swarm; in Hinterhäuser the piece merely sounds like a sparser version of the first five. Given that Liebner also offers Ustvolskaya’s 12 Preludes, feeder works for the gestural vocabulary of the sonatas, really it’s a no-brainer.“ (Gramophone)

Antonii Baryshevskyi, piano

Antonii Baryshevskyi
was born in Kiev. At the age of seven he began to learn the piano. In 2007 he entered the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music of Ukraine (class of Valery Kozlov). He is currently undertaking an assistant traineeship at the National Academy of Music of Ukraine and studying at the École Supérieure de Musique in Paris (class of Marian Rybicki).

He has taken part in master-classes given by Alfred Brendel, Daniel Pollack and Lily Dorfman. At the age of sixteen he was a prize-winner of the All-Ukrainian programme Man of the Year, and one year after that he took part in a youth concert of Radio Europe in Munich.

Since 2012 he has been a soloist with the National Philharmonic of Ukraine.

Prize-winner at numerous international competitions, among them the competition Performer-Composer in St Petersburg (1st prize, 2004), the International Piano Competition in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in Kiev (2nd prize, 2005), the International Piano Competition in Jaén (1st prize, 2009), the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition (2nd prize, 2011) and the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv (1st prize, 2014).

Regularly gives recitals and performs with symphony orchestras in Ukraine and internationally. Has toured to France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Spain, Germany, Israel and the USA.

Has produced recordings on radio and TV in Ukraine, Serbia, Italy, Denmark and Spain. Featured in a recording of music for a film produced by the Dovzhenko Film Studios. Naxos has released a solo disc by the pianist.

Booklet for Galina Ustvolskaya: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 - 6