Masur Conducts Gubaidulina and Bruckner

on January 30, 2009
San Francisco Symphony’s new Phyllis C. Wattis Composer Residency program starts with two weeks devoted to the music of the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. The first of the programs features The Light of the End, which the composer herself describes as a dramatic work in which much of the drama arises from the nature of musical instruments themselves. She also says, “For some time I have experience this conflict as my own drama: the incompatibility, in principle, of these intrinsic qualities with real-life circumstances in which nature neutralized. Sooner or later, this pain had to be manifested in some composition.” The Light of the End is paired with Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, “Romantic.”