Gubaidulina: Pro et Contra

Sofia Gubaidulina, born in Tschistopol in 1931, educated in Kazan and Moscow, and more suppressed than supported in the Soviet music world of the 1960s and 1970s, is definitely today’s most important living woman composer. Her works are distinguished by euphonious sound even amid the harshest accumulations of dissonance. Balanced formal proportions, finely coordinated temporal relations, and the rhythmic organization of time constitute the basis of her music. Here her foundation is the plane on which dissonance and consonance, tension and relaxation, and conflict and resolution are realized – which is perhaps why she enjoys such great popularity, despite the complexity of her music. cpo is now rereleasing three orchestral works spanning a period of almost twenty years: Fairy Tale Poem and Concordanza of 1971 and the grandly dimensioned Pro et Contra of 1989.