In Wednesday’s (5/18) Los Angeles Times, David Mermelstein writes, “Dressed mundanely in a teal blouse framed by a cream-colored jacket and slacks, Sofia Gubaidulina could be just another diminutive retiree, ready for a game of canasta or a lap around the mall. But in fact this unassuming senior citizen, who remains unknown to most Americans, is among the world’s foremost composers. Her scores have made a deep impression on such prominent musicians as the violinists Gidon Kremer and Anne-Sophie Mutter, and, more recently, on Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel. Indeed, on Thursday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dudamel will give the American premiere of Gubaidulina’s ‘Glorious Percussion,’ a work for orchestra and five percussion soloists whose first performance he led in 2008 with Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. The piece will be sandwiched between Brahms’s ‘Tragic’ Overture and Symphony No. 2 as part of the philharmonic’s ‘Brahms Unbound’ series on a program to be repeated Saturday and Sunday. … A cross section of her prolific output was the focus of a four-concert series that ran through Tuesday at REDCAT, the Cal Arts performance space in the Disney Hall complex downtown.”
Posted May 18, 2011
