Silvestrov’s Fifth is one of the best-kept secrets of the ex-Soviet symphonic repertoire. It was composed in 1980-82, and its 1988 Melodiya recording, never widely available in the West, became something of a cult hit with his fellow-Ukrainians and with Russian musicians and students. A few years ago I nominated it as the finest symphony composed in the former Soviet Union since the death of Shostakovich, and I stand by that view.
Like the Postludium with which it is coupled here, it is quite deliberately nostalgic – a symphony composed, as it were, after the death of the genre and consisting only of poignant memories. In musical terms those memories are of the melodic and accompanimental figures characteristic of nineteenth-century song; so the structure consists of quietly ecstatic extended melodies spaced by even more ecstatic efflorescences of piano-accompaniment-derived textures.
Throughout the symphony’s unbroken, slow-moving 47-minute span, Silvestrov’s precise ear for harmony, his extreme sensitivity to orchestral texture, and his subtlety of large-scale control, are remarkable. Just as importantly, his visions of timeless beauty are set in the context of ‘here-and-now’ emotional pain (if you are sampling before buying, be sure to hear past the first three minutes where that context is set up). The way these contrasting phases foreshadow, overlap and echo one another has the feeling of genuine symphonic mastery, and all this is why, for me, the consolation of this music runs deeper than so much of the New Euphony, managing to avoid meretricious self-gratification.
The Postludium (similar in style but marginally less interesting as a piece, I find) is also available on CD from Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga; the new performance is fractionally tauter without any loss in atmosphere. The symphony is played with precision and sympathy, missing the extraordinary trance-like beauty of the Kiev Conservatoire performance on that 1988 Melodiya LP, but only by a whisker. Find yourself a quiet hour and let this masterpiece cast its magic spell.'