On track: Composer's faith, hope and clarity

A new collaboration between the young Israeli-born flautist Sharon Bezaly and Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina is a cause for celebration, especially when the occasion is the premiere recording of a new flute concerto.

For some years, Bezaly has been one of the most popular artists on the Swedish BIS label.

A few months back, her Masterworks for Flute and Piano with Richard Brautigam may have had a pedestrian title, but the music by Prokofiev, Dutilleux, Jolivet and Schubert was anything but.

Last year, Bezaly's beautifully contoured and considered Mozart concertos surprised many with their piquant, contemporary cadenzas.

The new concerto which has brought Bezaly and Gubaidulina together certainly has an intriguing title - The Deceitful Face of Hope and of Despair - inspired, as is much of the composer's work, by her religious faith. The words here are taken from T.S. Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday.

Gubaidulina builds up a unique sonic environment as she considers the fine differences between tone and pulse, despair and faith. The BIS recording captures it in all its subtlety and occasional spectacle.

Bezaly is very much part of the composer's overall vision, although she has moments of cascading virtuosity.

This is a more contemplative offering than some of Gubaidulina's scores, although at one point an earth-shattering outburst allows Mario Venzago and the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra some pages to relish.

There are New Zealand connections with the other work on the disc. Swedish cellist Torleif Thedeen has appeared with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra on more than one occasion and here he is soloist in Gubaidulina's Sieben Worte, alongside the accordionist Mie Miki.

Again, this is a piece of spiritual significance, a dramatic and highly colouristic exploration of the same Seven Last Words of Jesus on the Cross better known through Haydn's setting.

Inspired by the intense drama of the text, Gubaidulina deals out her familiar sheets of sound alongside Thedeen's passionate cello.

Miki's accordion nods to the composer's Tatar folk heritage as well as evoking the sound of a somewhat rustic church organ, all the time reminding us that few instruments can deliver tone clusters with the visceral impact of this one.

* Sofia Gubaidulina, The Deceitful Face of Hope and of Despair (BIS SACD 1449, through Elite Imports)