GALINA USTVOLSKAYA, the great Russian maverick. Unique, fearless, and totally uncompromising.
She was a student of Shostakovich - but rejected him. Born 1919 in St Petersburg, she was the only girl in his class, having been accepted early into the Conservatory where she would end up a long-time professor. And if Shostakovich had anything to teach her then it seemed she had more to teach him, for he would send her his unfinished works to critique. He uses some of her original themes; he even proposed marriage. But, it was an esteem that was unreturned. She never showed him what she was actually writing, which was far more avant-garde than anybody was writing at the time. Of course, her early work had to toe the Soviet line as everybody’s did. But in secret, she was developing this style of her own that began to attract a following in the 60s, filtering out here to the west some decades later. It’s very dark and unique. Somebody called her the lady with the hammer. She herself used to say it comes from God
MUSIC: Piano sonata No. 1 (1947)
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
