Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937)
Violin Concerto (2016)
Symphony No. 8 (2012-3)
Janusz Wawrowski (violin), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra/Christopher Lyndon-Gee
rec. 2022, Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall, Vilnius, Lithuania
Naxos 8.574481 [54]
Valentin Silvestrov is the grand old man of Ukrainian music, though since the Russian invasion of 2022 he has lived in exile in Berlin. He belongs to the same generation as the Georgian Giya Kancheli and the Estonian Arvo Pärt, who all grew up under the Soviet Union, explored European modernism at first in secret and then each forged their own personal style.
Silvestrov’s idiom puts his music as a kind of late meditation on the European musical tradition. Some of his works have titles such as Postlude or Post Scriptum to reflect this. His breakthrough work, with which he found international fame, was his fifth symphony, of 1982, which shows this clearly and which has been recorded several times (review). It begins with a kind of catastrophe, after which fragments slowly emerge and start coalescing, gradually developing into themes. The work is in one movement and lasts nearly three quarters of an hour. This is a kind of modern rethinking on a larger scale of the structure of the last movement of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, which does something similar. I have not heard his earlier symphonies, whose availability on record has been patchy, but the later ones are now being recorded. In preparation for listening to this release of Symphony No. 8 and writing this review I listened again to its three predecessors.
The sixth symphony is rather similar to the fifth, but on an even larger scale, and the opening catastrophe is cosmic in scale. It is a formidable work (review). In contrast, Symphony No. 7 is much shorter, only seventeen minutes, and is much more personal (review). It is in fact another tribute to his wife Larissa, who had died in 1996, and for whom he had already written a Requiem (review ~ review).
Symphony No 8 at first seems quite different, since it is in six numbered movements, but they play continuously, lasting just over half an hour, so the effect is again of a one movement work. There are various repeating themes, with two falling and two rising motifs and there are also features which appear only once, such as a piano solo in the third movement, the harp theme in the fourth and brief melodic fragments for flute and clarinet in the sixth. This variety makes it easier listening than the fifth and, especially, the sixth symphony, but it remains a powerful work.
The Violin Concerto, with which this disc begins, is in four movements lasting a total of twenty minutes, and is therefore a kind of junior companion to his earlier and much longer Widmung (Dedication), symphony for violin and orchestra of 1990-1. It is cast in the form of a dialogue between soloist and orchestra, with the violin having lyrical themes, which are in contrast with, and eventually overcome, the more forceful material from the orchestra. Silvestrov mentioned Beethoven in this connection, and I thought of the dialogue between soloist and orchestra in the slow movement of his fourth piano concerto.
Silvestrov’s works were first introduced to Western audiences by the label ECM, which has a distinguished record in issuing many of them. The baton has now been taken up by Naxos, and this is Christopher Lyndon-Gee’s third disc of Silvestrov’s music, others including one of Widmung (review) and one including the seventh symphony. The performances are strong and assured and Janusz Wawrowski is a convincing soloist in the Violin Concerto. The recording is fine and the notes helpful. Perhaps Lyndon-Gee will go on to give us a complete Silvestrov symphony cycle; I, for one, would welcome that.
Stephen Barber
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