The record producer Helmut Mühle visited the composer several times at her home in Appen, near Hamburg, creating a profound portrait of a spiritual personality. He shared the portraits with Gidon Kremer and we present them here for the first time.
The radio producer Bruce Duffie interviewed Gubaidulina through an interpreter in 1997. She instructed him in the correct pronunciation of her name – GubaiDOOlina – and allowed a glimpse into her inner world.
BD: When you’re writing a piece, are you always in control of it, or are there times when the notes seem to be leading your hand?
SG: [Thinks for a moment.] Yes, I am controlling my process.
BD: Always?
SG: Yes. Yes, yes.
BD: Does the piece ever fight you at all?
SG: I wouldn’t say that the piece fights me, but there is certain resistance, a discrepancy or gap between what my unconscious intuition wants and the structuralities that I want to impose on my pure intuition.
BD: Who wins?
SG: In general, the intuition wins. Even in the case when the structural support would dominate, still intuition wins; it’s more important that intuition would dominate. For me the most important thing is not to interfere with intuition, not to get in the way of intuition. I understand that this solution can be very different for different composers; they can have different solutions for this problem. There are different types of composers, and one type tends to be more strong in intuition, and another one more strong in intellectual. I’m not judging whether it’s good or not; it doesn’t mean that it’s good or bad.
BD: Just different?
SG: The main thing is that for the person who has a very strong intuition, he would not encounter any resistance from the intellectual side. And for the person who has very strong intellectual side of his genius, this intellectual side would not overpower the emotional, or intuitive side.
BD: Is this just about other composers, or also the performers of your music?
SG: It is about the composers in general.
Full interview here
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