When in the first decade of the twentieth century, pioneering Russian creative artists turned to the sun for inspiration, they saw this theme as a symbol of liberation from turn-of-the-century decadence. In The Canticle of the Sun the power of the sun celebrates two liberating forces: specifically, the dedicatee, Mstislav Rostropovich, who shed light in the darkness of the later Soviet years (Gubaidulina has even spoken of the work embodying his ‘sunny personality’) and more generally, the spiritual sources which the composer has explored through her own musical journey within and beyond Soviet Russia. The Canticle of the Sun is a response to a text by St Francis of Assisi, in which he humbly glorifies the creator. Gubaidulina, aware that the music should not be ostentatious or complicated, suggests the mysteries of creation and humanity through solo cello and percussion, and places St Francis’s text in the restrained mouths of the choir as a kind of wondering response. The second work on this disc is a setting of five poems by Marina Tsvetayeva for unaccompanied choir.

The Stockholm Syndrome Ensemble is – as the name implies – based in Stockholm, and consists of five of the city's leading musicians. Project-based and often inviting guest performers, the SSE is known for its imaginative programmes built around a particular event or concept and bringing together music from various genres and eras. For its first album on BIS the ensemble has taken Brett Dean’s Voices of Angels as their point of departure, a work scored for the same forces as Schubert’s ‘Trout quintet’ and inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s first two Duino Elegies: ‘Angels (it’s said) are often unable to tell whether they move amongst the living or the dead.’

Sofia Gubaidulina, one of the most distinct composers of the present time, says of herself that she is “a daughter of two worlds, whose soul lives in the music of both the West and East”. From her father’s side, her life was entered by the world of Islamic culture, while her mother introduced her to Christianity, in which she found her identity in the Orthodox faith. Her quest for a singular style was strongly influenced by the legacies of J. S. Bach and Anton Webern, as well as Dmitri Shostakovich, who encouraged her to remain herself and “continue down the mistaken path” for which she was criticised by the guardians of aesthetic correctness in the Soviet Union. Gubaidulina’s personal story is one of a struggle to live in truth, conducted with calm, patience, perseverance and inner conviction. The five string quartets represent a singular journey towards a vision of freedom beyond the borders of any system: she extracts the material from beyond major-minor tonality, using micro-intervals, serial techniques, aleatory elements, unusual playing methods, thus revealing previously unthought-of acoustic possibilities of instruments, including the space itself, the movement of musicians, etc. The Stamic Quartet, an ensemble representing the famous Czech quartet school, is an attentive interpreter of the first complete recording.

Sofia Gubaidulina’s religious nature, specifically Russian Orthodox, finds expression in each of these pieces. Each also makes use of her much-loved bayan, the Russian button accordion played here with great virtuosity by Iñaki Alberdi. Kadenza is a solo tour de force; Et exspecto, based on the closing words of the Creed (‘I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come’) is an impressive five-movement sonata in which, the booklet-note tells us, the performer’s interpretation goes, with her encouragement, well beyond the composer’s notation. In the other works, much is made of the combination of the accordion sounds and Asier Polo’s cello. With In croce, a number of cross-like ideas derive from the title – crossing of registers, crossing of lines and textures and so on – which are essentially private creative stimuli for the composer. But in the major work on the record, the half-hour Seven Words, the sentences spoken by Jesus on the cross are graphically, even fervently implied. Gubaidulina’s love of short motifs, here often using very close intervals, produces in her hands music of strong and even painful intensity, seizing and gripping the attention, sometimes with fiercely punched chords on the accordion or with soaring harmonics on the cello that vanish into silence after the final Word. The longest movement is the central No 4, Jesus’s cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’, a powerful and deeply affecting invention. This is a remarkable, compelling work.

Alexander Ivashkin’s bold, confident cello-playing is the thread running through these works; he partners the organist Malcolm Hicks in the 1979 In croce, plays the Ten Preludes for the solo instrument from 1979, and leads a quartet of cellos in the remarkable Quaternion. Though many of Sofia Gubaidulina’s works have a religious dimension, In croce does not, despite its title; ‘On the cross’ refers to the way in which the two instruments exchange roles during the work, the cello beginning with microtones in the lowest register and gradually rising to a high diatonic end, while the organ starts off high in a pure A major and descends to the depths to a cluster that gradually collapses when the instrument’s blower is turned off. Though the Ten Preludes stretch the player’s capabilities to the maximum, they remain more or less within the conventional resources of the instrument. But Quaternion creates a whole new, ethereal, sound-world in which the cellos are tuned in pairs a quarter-tone apart, the players wear thimbles on their fingers in one section, and the music is persistently coloured by harmonics.

Nelsons is the guiding spirit in what is surely, listened to in order, one of the most remarkable musical and spiritual journeys ever conceived.

Anne-Sophie Mutter’s first Bach recording for DG couples his Concertos BWV 1041 and BWV 1042 with the world-premiere recording of the Concerto commissioned by her from Sofia Gubaidulina, the Russian composer who regards Bach as her greatest source of inspiration. Mutter gave the premiere performance of Gubaidulina’s Concerto at the 2007 Lucerne Festival and will record the work with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev at the beginning of 2008.

Three leading Russian composers (Gubaidulina, Artyomov and Suslin) formed the Astraea ensemble in 1975 to research and perform music for eastern and Transcaucasian folk and traditional instruments (wind, string and percussion). After performing works by each of the members, the group decided to abandon notation and perform freely improvised and spontaneous pieces. This, their sole album, was originally issued in Russia only and now receives its global premiere. The three members of Astraea play on the first two tracks: Instruments include the duduk, salamuri, tar, kiamancha, chonguri, kanon, mandolin, and various types of drums and bells. The third piece, which is quasi-electronic, is also an improvisation, with a very small amount of set arrangement.