Underrepresented Twice: Spotlighting Unknown Soviet Repertoire by Female Composers and Ethnic Minorities

In recent years the American viola community shared an increased interest in viola music by composers of underrepresented backgrounds, from the present and from the past. In this lecture recital—based on my recent pioneering research of unknown original viola works from the Soviet Era—I will introduce three solo works by Soviet composers, which never became known in the West, and fell under obscurity in the (ex-)USSR territories, mainly due to the composers’ background. I will start by introducing the first movement from the 1985/87 Sonata for Viola Solo by the Ukrainian Alexander Shchetynsky (b. 1960), who currently blossoms in Ukraine and Poland but receives a much lesser degree of international recognition. The Sonata is progressive in its style, expressionistic, questions traditional tonal and rhythmic hierarchies, and as such falls under the category of ‘unofficial music’, as defined by Peter Schmelz. Following, is the 1967 Suite op. 2 for Viola Solo by Elena Firsova (b.1950) who currently resides in the UK and was one of the very few acclaimed young female composers in the USSR. Her early Suite consists of four short movements, exploring different instrumental and compositional techniques, atonal yet expressive, celebrating the human-voice-like qualities associated with the viola in Soviet scholarship. I will conclude my lecture with the 1985 Genesis Sonata by Azerbaijani composer Khayyam Mirzazade (1935-2018), who was hailed in his Republic, but never broke through the cultural glass ceiling elsewhere. Genesis is a monumental piece, powerful in its simplicity, perfectly tailored for the instrument, and reflects the late Soviet peripheral tendency to compose in the style known in the West as ‘world-music’. The lecture aims to encourage violists to explore underrepresented repertoire from times of great repression, under the light of the biblical message that humans were equally created “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27).