Artist
© Peter HundertSofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Gubaidulina, born in Chistopol in Tatarstan in 1931, is one of the most important Russian contemporary composers. She studied composition and piano first in Kazan and then from 1954 to 1963 in Moscow. As a student, she won a Stalin Scholarship, while her music was criticized as »irresponsible«. Dmitri Shostakovich, however, encouraged her to pursue her »misguided path«.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Sofia Gubaidulina’s works were banned in the Soviet Union, since her music did not conform to the precepts of socialist realism. Her success in the West was aided mainly by Gidon Kremer and Reinbert de Leeuw, who gave the world premiere of her First Violin Concerto ›Offertorium‹ in 1981. Ever since, Sofia Gubaidulina joined Alfred Schnittke and Edisson Denisov as the leading Russian composers of the post-Shostakovich era, winning worldwide recognition.
In 2000, Gubaidulina and Tan Dun, Osvaldo Golijov and Wolfgang Rihm received a commission from the International Bach Academy in Stuttgart for the project ›Passion 2000 (in memory of J. S. Bach)‹. Her contribution was a ›St. John Passion‹. In 2002 this was followed by the composition ›Johannes-Ostern‹. Both works form a diptych on the death and resurrection of Christ; it is Gubaidulina’s largest work so far. Her Second Violin Concerto ›In tempus praesens‹ was dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter. In 2003, Walter Fink invited her to be the first woman featured in the Rheingau Music Festival’s annual composer portrait.
Sofia Gubaidulina has lived in Germany since 1992. She is a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg and the Royal Swedish Music Academy in Stockholm, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990 she was named a member of the committee awarding the Lenin Prizes. In 1999, she was inducted into the order Pour le Mérite. Since 2001 she has been an honorary professor at the Kazan Conservatory, since 2005 also of the Beijing and Tianjin Conservatories. In 2018, she was appointed a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars every year.