Various Artists - Soviet Chamber Music (2024)

Portents of dissent and change pervade the chamber music of the Soviet Union’s later years. Many of its composers – including Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke, Viktor Galina Ustvolskaya – were writing music that began to break from the “Socialist realism” mandated by the Ministry of Culture, and laid the groundwork for new directions in post-Warsaw Pact music.

Northern Flowers returns to international availability David Geringas’s perfectly curated program of late Soviet chamber music with cello, coupled with one of the earliest Western recordings of music by Ustvolskaya, the provocative Composition No. 1 that plumbs the extreme ranges of piccolo and bassoon with piano.