SHOSTAKOVICH: STRING QUARTET N

Of the several works by Sofia Gubaidulina released on disc in the past year, I was most affected by the problematically entitled Rejoice!—joined on disc with an equally taut rendering of Shostakovich's Ode to Desolation. -- Edward Strickland, FANFARE [Want List, 1990] The background to Sofia Gubaidulina's Rejoice!...is in the spiritual lessons of Grigory Skovoroda, an eighteenth-century Ukrainian philosopher and religious thinker. These supply the sub-titles (rather Messiaen-like in resonance) of each of the five movements. The composer herself cautions, "It should not be assumed that I wanted to illustrate the theme of joy in my music... the religious theme is experienced metaphorically." It is meant to be experienced musically as well, through the juxtaposition of "normal" sounds and harmonics: "The possibility for string instruments to derive pitches of various heights at one and the same place on the string can be experienced in music as the transition to another plane o