‘Every human being, every living creature, every tree and every flower has its sound. There is sound everywhere in the universe,’ said Sofia Gubaidulina in 2006. It has been her life’s calling to express these intense sounds in her compositions – compositions that made their first and very strong impression on western audiences in 1981, when famous violinist Gidon Kremer played her violin concerto Offertorium on his tours of Europe and America.

At the time she was still living in the Soviet Union, working hard to develop her own unique musical language despite the (artistic) repression of the regime. She cherished Shostakovich’s advice at her graduation from Moscow’s conservatoire to ‘keep going down her own misguided path’.