Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings

“Gubaidulina composed her Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings in 1975. It is dedicated to the Russian bassoonist Valeri Popov, who gave its first performance in Moscow the following year.
The composer has described the formal structure of the piece as follows: 'The first, third and fifth movements represent sections of sonata form. The first movement is the exposition, so to speak, the third is the development and the fifth is the recapitulatiori. The second and fourth movements are intermezzi, The movements are moreover linked together: the episode that ends the first movement also begins the third, and the fifth movement begins with the same material which concluded the third.'
Alongside the purely formal aspect, Gubaidulina's idea of personification of tonal colours and of the dramaturgical functionalisation of bassoon and instrumental ensemble are of great significance in the work. Sofia Gubaidulina has here succeeded in creating a role-play with the bassoon, which appears as a sort of personality with the task of fighting a swamp of banalities but which is finally subsumed therein. Standing in the centre of the tragicomical buffoonery, it fulfils a Charlie Chaplin-like röle.
The composer has often explained that it was her task to use musical expression as a means to find a correspondence to the complex situation of mankind today. Her Bassoon Concerto is one of the works which show these words to be more than mere rhetoric.”
(Victor Suslin)