Galina Ustvolskaya, Twelve Preludes, I

This is astonishing music and the purest music imaginable. Ustvolskaya attains this purity with a radically extreme economy of means that enables her to focus her aural imagination—to hear more deeply, and to hear more in less. Her Preludes are contrapuntal forms. J.S. Bach, in his later fugues, can be found doing away with the simplest possibilities his subjects offer, seeking out and showcasing ever more improbable dispositions of the basic material. He broadens himself by opening his heart to uncharted territory: his compositional ethic radiates faith and humanism. So Ustvolskaya’s language in her Preludes is contrapuntal; she finds musical expression entirely through invertible counterpoint, seeking sound combinations that are as radical and as humanistic as Bach’s. The music burns with precision, is intensely concentrated, and is deeply expressive, yet defies expression only because everything being said is purely musical.