Sofia Gubaidulina - Offertorium

Sofia Gubaidulina (1931 - ) - Offertorium (1980, rev. 1982 and 1986) Gidon Kremer, violin Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Dutoit (1988) Sofia Gubaidulina’s Offertorium is a concerto for violin and orchestra written for and dedicated to Gidon Kremer. The idea of writing a violin concerto came from a chance conversation between Gubaidulina and Kremer, in which Kremer offhandedly requested for her to write one. At the time of its completion, both Kremer and Gubaidulina were not in good standing with the Soviet government, so the work had to be smuggled to Kremer, who gave the work’s premier performance in 1981 in Vienna. The work typically lasts around 35 minutes. “Until the early 1980s, Gubaidulina’s works were little known in the USSR because of the authorities’ disapproval of her compositional style, and her music was also virtually unknown in the west. Performances of this violin concerto changed those circumstances in Europe and later in the United States, as