Piano Works (1995)

Met o.a. "Chaconne", gespeeld door Ralph van Raat in het Enschedese Muziekcentrum, 5 februari 2011. "There is a distinctive pluralism to be heard in the earlier works of Sofia Gubaidulina (1931) which makes her ability to give these compositions an unmistakable coherence remarkable. The Chaconne (1962) is a student piece in which coherence is put at risk by a rather episodic form. The musical imagination hear here, makes Shostakovich seem relatively conventional. The Sonata (1965) has a superb, darkly eloquent Adagio and an incisive finale rescue the piece and make the overall experience a memorable one. The echoes of Prokofiev do nothing to dilute Gubaidulina's originality. After the collection of delightfully direct and far-from-lightweight pieces for children (1969), Introïtus (1978) offers a characteristically quirky mixture of the ritualistic and the rhapsodic. Andreas Haefliger responds wholeheartedly to Gubaidulina's clangorous and frequently demanding piano writing." (Gramophone)