Quartet for Four Flutes

‘The quartet combines five movements with absolute homogeneity of the musical material, which presents itself in the first movement and develops in the following movements. The cyclical composition has very little in common with the classical form, as it is formally free enough and combines graceful improvisation with strict interval selection, combined with various states of musical material: chromaticism, diatonicism, pentatonicism and non-tempered micro-intervallicism. These components successively gain the upper hand in different sections or are layered on top of each other several times simultaneously. The fractionation of the four states of chromaticism, diatonicism, pentatonicism and microintervallicism is clearly evident for the first time in this work by Gubaidulina and can be observed even more consistently in the piano concerto ‘Introitus’ (1978), which was composed shortly afterwards.
As far as the instrumental physiology is concerned, the piece is very elegantly conceived: 4 soprano instruments (only two of which occasionally switch to alto flute) conduct an informal bird's-eye conversation, allowing ever new timbres and polyphonic-heterophonic constellations to emerge.
Gubaidulina is not only free of the typical avant-garde idiosyncrasy towards repetition and the recognisability of motifs, but actually manifests both (e.g. the beginning of the second movement repeats the first literally note for note, but the continuation goes in a completely different direction and introduces completely new tone colours and pitch components in the playing: Vibrato in the low register or the microintervallic multiphonic sounds in the subsequent episode or at the beginning of the 5th movement, where the easily recognisable pentatonic motif of the 1st movement is placed in a completely new context).
This combination of unconstrained improvisation, concealing a very strict selection of intervals, and a clear, narrative compositional plan with great colourfulness in the use of the instruments gives the quartet its special charm and clearly distinguishes it from the everyday cliché of ‘avant-garde music for flute’.
The work was composed in 1977 and performed for the first time in the same year by Pierre-Alain Biget, Pierre-Yves Artaud, Robert Thuillier and Arlete Leroy.’
(Viktor Suslin)