This CD contains six works. Like me, I suspect many listeners will find they must take them one or two (at most) at a time-such is their demand on our attention, such is their ferocity of focus. Oleg Malov was close to the composer and premiered many of these works. He seems to understand Ustvolskya's intentions perfectly. One cannot imagine his performances bettered. Indeed, No.3 was written for him.

The piano that is uncovered, or perhaps recovered, for us by these works is sparse, dry, sometimes percussive, and highly articulate. Every detail of melodic line, every voice of counterpoint, every rhythmic cell, every jarring cluster, and every pianissimo/fortissimo contrast, is placed before the ear for precise acknowledgment. Ustvolskaya permits no emotive blurring, no sustaining pedals, no rubatos, no arpeggios, and no grace notes or filigree embellishments. Nothing but listening is required. How big a task mere listening turns out to be.

Frank Denyer's recording for Conifer Classics ((75605 512622) is notable both for his very personal notes and the intensity of his totally committed performances. He reminds us of Ustvolskaya's spirituality and belief that her music speaks most clearly given in religious settings, representing fear of God, a gaze into the abyss leaving the listener ultimately "dazed and isolated in inner darkness". This recording is indispensable.

Mr. Hinterhäuser is an effective pianist, his interpretations, while lacking the sheer physicality of Ms. Schroeder's, do offer another dimension to Ms. Ustvolskaya's compositions - that of space. Hinterhäuser looks to the gaps, the rests between her intervals, for the subtleties in her austere lines and chords, for inspiration, and for revelation. And it works. Hinterhäuser concerned himself with the spiritual element that is clearly at the heart of Galina Ustvolskaya's work, and has moved through his use of her space to turn pessimism into a kind of frustrated longing, which, given her few statements over these last three decades, is an accurate appraisal of her aim.

To study this, to really get involved, is in the first place painful, it demands unbelievably much force of the player, dynamic signatures range between 3 and 6 fortes. In the beginning I had to stop practising after 10 minutes, because it just got to painful for my hands. And that is a peculiar experience, that you're busy for hours and hours with a piece in which you just hammer away with extreme force on a piano.