Common view: “Apart from a Duet for violin and piano (1964), she wrote nothing else during the 1960s.”

Galina Ivanovna was constantly composing something. It's also true that not everything she composed was something she found necessary to include in her Сatalogue. I would say: Ustvolskaya composed a great deal in the 1960s. But the only work she considered worthy to be included in a list of her primary works was Duet. I tore up many scores in 1965 on her insistence. Some of them could have been written in the 1960s. Many scores are now in the Archive of Cinematography. Some of these could also have been written in the 60s. In addition, when she learned that the Leningrad archive of music and film scores had many of her manuscripts, she asked me to buy them and to destroy them. Maybe the last few years of the 60s were spent on contemplating and rethinking the powerful triad of Compositions. I should also add that Galina Ivanovna was destroying many of her works herself. Maybe some of them were composed in the 60s as well. She was going to college 2-3 times a week and all the rest of the time she worked at home. I sometimes saw the results of her work, torn into many pieces in a trash bin. I did not ask her what that was because I was doing the same thing as a student. In those years she told me once that some scores were hidden under the cover of the piano in her mother's house. She demanded that I should go to her mother and destroy them. I refused categorically and some time later I asked her about these works. She answered that the scores had been destroyed. Which scores, and how many, she refused to tell, pointing to her heart and saying: THEY ARE HERE. Ustvolskaya was still composing even when seriously ill during the last years of her life, despite the absence of actual manuscripts. To the outside world, it seemed she had gone silent in the 60s and after 1990 — but it was a simple ignorance of the facts that gave rise to this wrong impression.

International Symposium “Galina Ustvolskaya: New Perspectives”
27.05.2011, Amsterdam

Elena Nalimova “Bringing Ustvolskaya's chamber music to the next generation: performance, pedagogy and presentation” (video)

1. “Alesha Nikolaev was one of Ustvolskaya's most gifted students” [04:20]

   None of her students – neither Tishchenko, nor Banevich or Nikolayev – did Ustvolskaya ever single out for special praise and she certainly did not consider any of them as “the most gifted”. According to Ustvolskaya, she taught «only to subsist on it». In conversations with me she referred to all her students as “raw material for crafting”, and believed that “they were educated at the Conservatory”.

2. “During the late 1980s, Ustvolskaya suddenly changed her preference from St. Petersburg-born pianist Oleg Malov to Reinbert de Leeuw of Amsterdam. Ustvolskaya praised Malov on different occasions and recommended his participation in performances of her works, of which we have some evidence.” [08:00]

   Ustvolskaya did not praise Malov, but rather thanked him many times for the performance of her music. And she did not «suddenly change her preference» for Reinbert, but rather suddenly heard that this musician, without asking a single question of the author, played her music as she heard it, unlike Malov, whom Galina Ivanovna had to teach to play her music. It was de Leeuw she REALLY praised.

3. “Stravinsky, whom Ustvolskaya admittedly admired greatly...” [21:45]

   Ustvolskaya admired only the finale of his “The Rite of Spring” [hear it now – 1 minute] as well as the Finale of Tchaikovsky’s “Sixth Symphony”.

1. Rachel Jeremiah-Foulds: “I think something to do with her health is also present. Because it’s not just a sort of agitation in the hand-writing as she gets older, there’s certainly a shaking as well. So there’s an element of health: it does impact her hand-writing.” [12:10]

   The shake or tremor began in 1998, so Ustvolskaya finished her last work (1990) with her natural handwriting, which of course changed throughout her life.

2. Elmer Schönberger: “By the way, it's rather amazing that the name of Shostakovich has hardly been mentioned today because you cannot read any article or review on Ustvolskaya [without it also being] about Shostakovich. I hoped that one of our Russian friends would have maybe more to say about it, because we in the West are dependent on second-hand information, so to say. We have no access to the sources. I would like to know for instance: I read somewhere that Shostakovich was defending his pupil Ustvolskaya more than once in the Composer's Union against attacks in the so-called formalism. And I think this is also in the brochure which is published by Sikorski and which is written by Victor Suslin. But I remember in the late years – in the middle of 90s, I think – Ustvolskaya came to Holland and was interviewed at the time for a Dutch weekly, and Suslin was there as well. And there he said: well, this is not true at all. Shostakovich hardly did anything for her. Well, maybe once, but not twice. I would like to know if any of you can give any more factual information on this topic.” [15:17]

   It would be better to ask that not of your Russian friends nor of Suslin, who did not live with Ustvolskaya for 40 years, as I did, her widower, who knows the nuances of her life like no other. Shostakovich did not advocate Ustvolskaya either in the Composers' Union nor on the street. Never.

3. Elena Nalimova: “In this letter, he [Suslin] showed me (I have a copy of it in my possession) – it's a description of a conversation between Suslin and Ustvolskaya. Ustvolskaya says that it was not Shostakovich who protected her. Shostakovich did not say a word, but there were two other teachers from the St. Petersburg Conservatory who wrote a petition and because of whom she was allowed to continue.” [18:38]

   Ustvolskaya was about to be excluded from the Conservatory when, at the Academic Council, she was defended by one person who even took responsibility for her. That was Maximilian Oseevich Steinberg. Shostakovich, during discussion of this issue, went out into the corridor to smoke, and for this Steinberg was very upset with him.

4. Alexander Ivashkin: “It is well known that Ustvolskaya kept a number of Shostakovich's unpublished scores, including "The Gamblers", until a very late [stage]. [...] And the second document was mentioned to me by Irina Antonovna Shostakovich who actually was the only person who read a collection of the letters from Ustvolskaya to Shostakovich, which she discovered after Shostakovich's death in his flat. And she sent these letters back to Ustvolskaya, of course, because Irina Antonovna said they were so personal and so passionate that she felt Ustvolskaya should have them. And, of course, Ustvolskaya burned them.” [23:39]

   Ustvolskaya kept only two scores by Shostakovich – "The Gamblers" and the song cycle "From Jewish Poetry". And in a few years she returned "The Gamblers" to the author at his request. The only score related to Shostakovich which remains in Ustvolskaya's home is the score of Stravinsky’s "Symphony of Psalms" with an inscription by Shostakovich to Ustvolskaya dated March 18, 1955. Since 1964 Galina Ivanovna and I divided responsibilities in the following fashion: she taught and composed, I proceeded with everyday life, including taking care of mail. We had PO boxes at the post offices (first M-105 on Blagodatnaya street, then M-135 on Gagarin prospekt), which I (not G.I.) checked every day. As I do today. Galina Ivanovna did not even know where the door of our post office was. All that came to her name, I brought to her. But since 1964 I saw no letter from Irina Antonovna. Nor, of course, did Galina Ivanovna. The only exception is the single letter sent in 2000, which I quote in full (along with its response) below.
   

   original letter & response
   translated letter & response

   Ustvolskaya never understood what letters Irina Antonovna referred to in this single letter of 2000. I think that it was a fantasy of old age. In 1965, Galina Ivanovna brought to the kitchen's garbage chute two thick bundles of letters tied with strings, a pack of manuscripts of her works and demanded that I tear it all to pieces and throw it in the garbage chute. I refused, saying that she had better do it herself, to which she replied that she «did not want to get her hands dirty». The letters were from Shostakovich. These I tore and threw down first. Galina Ivanovna stood by and oversaw the process. When she went to an unexpected phone call, I was able to hide away a pile of scores. It was turned out to be Octet and Trio. So, I'm the saviour of these works. As for the confident assertion of Mr. Ivashkin that Ustvolskaya burned the letters, one may presume that Mr. Ivashkin was near Ustvolskaya during this "auto-da-fé".

5. Elena Nalimova: “As for the early 70s... When I was in St. Petersburg I studied with Oleg Malov for five years. I started these studies in 1993 […], and I know from him...because of all the scores...[with] Usvolskaya's inscription on all of them... I have them... all of them have a dedication to Oleg Malov, “the most wonderful musician”. I'm talking about all the piano sonatas, I'm talking about Grand Duet, all the Compositions...” [26:48]

   You say that all the works of Ustvolskaya were dedicated to Malov. Fabulous! But we know that she dedicated only the Third Sonata to him and subsequently withdrew this dedication. Why she did it, only I know at this point. Some day, I will take a note about that out from the "Diary", which I kept for many years during Ustvolskaya’s life, and which is signed in her hand. So please do not invent anything for your own convenience. Malov was the first performer of almost all the works of Ustvolskaya, and she was grateful to him for that. She wrote about that and spoke on this in one of the films. But this does not mean that ALL the works were dedicated to him.