Classical Convert

The Joy of Lera Auerbach

Today, after a miserable non-work filled day filled with snow-loathing for the piles and heaps of white stuff that are lounging around everywhere, I perked up a little after discovering the amazing Lera Auerbach. I found her name in a review of a disc with the Shostakovich Violin Sonata, along with one of her pieces. The parallels they were drawing sounded intriguing, and after a bit of googley detective work, my suspicions were satisfactorily satisfied.

Here website has a wonderful section in which you can listen to full performances of some of her works. This is extremely well done: these are not stupid 1 minute long samples, and they are reasonably good quality – an excellent decision on the part of whoever designed the site. This is especially true given that there are a very limited number of recordings of her works available on CD.

She’s a young Russian composer, only eight years older than I am. Her music reminds me of a less prickly, more melodic, more frenetic, and more modern, late-Shostakovich. Her music is essentially tonal, but with veerings in and out. I’m starting to feel that is the most essential quality for me to truly fall in love with a piece of music, and hers contains this in bucketloads. It reminds me a little also of Prokofiev, she has some of his motor rhythms and friskiness.

In short, I’m definitely going to be purchasing some of her music in the next couple of days. It’s wonderful!