The premiere in the Hall of the Composers Union was very successful and was followed by a banquet for all the participants (for which the composer borrowed the funds from somewhere!).
Soon after, in April 1977, Gubaidulina completed a piece for flute quartet for the ensemble founded in the 60s by Pierre-Yves Artaud in Paris. Artaud was a specialist in 20th century repertoire and attended composition classes by Messiaen and Jolivet. The piece was premiered in February 1979 in the church of St. Denis on the outskirts of Paris. Gubaidulina was more and more unsuccessful in getting premieres of her new works inside the Soviet Union so risked premiering works in other countries. As a protection from political retaliation, her name was not listed on the program! This piece was one of a group of works written for instruments in the same family that included the Trio for Three Trumpets and the Duo Sonata for two bassoons.
In October 1977 the members of Astraea, the composer's improvisatory trio that included Gubaidulina, travelled to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where they collected a number of folk instruments including the tar, Gubaidulina's favorite. Persian in origin, the tar has a figure-eight shaped body of mulberry wood and nine to eleven metal strings.
Gubaidulina has made a point of studying the folk music of a number of cultures: Armenian, Georgian, Yakutian, African, Balinese, Indian, Tibetan and so on.
A work from a bit later, 1982, and one that is, after her violin concerto Offertorium, one of the most-performed of her music is her Seven Words (of Jesus Christ on the Cross). The piece has solo parts for cello and bayan, the Russian accordion.
Just to reiterate, what I am doing in this series of posts is just going through the biography by Michael Kurtz and listening to the works in roughly chronological order. At the end I am going to do some closer examination of a few representative pieces with a bit of analysis.
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