SOFIA GUBAIDULINA, the Russian composer, who has just died 13 March 2025 at the age of 93, leaving many many recordings and honours to her name from countries right around the world. Including the rarely accorded Member of the American Academy of Art and Letters here in the States.
And yet until the late 1980s, when Gidon Kremer toured her first violin concerto around the world, she was completely unknown to the west. Born in poverty in 1931 in the Tatar region, she had a thoroughly Soviet upbringing where western contemporary music was banned - raids even took place in the dorm rooms of the conservatory, and her own music was pronounced “irresponsible”. In 1979 she was blacklisted, meaning no more performances at all. She was even once attacked by a man who tried to strangle her in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow, and her only thought to herself was regret that she would never get to finish her bassoon concerto. Everyone assumed it must have been the KGB.
Moving to Hamburg, in Germany, she was still composing right up until the time of her death. There’s a movie out about her recent violin concerto, one of my favorites. It’s very spiritual music. Her favorite advice came from Shostakovich, who told her in 1959 that she should continue on her own incorrect path
MUSIC: Violin Concerto No. 1 "Offertorium"
See here for the NPR obituary:
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5327261/sofia-gubaidulina-russian-composer-has-died
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
