I hope it’s not the kiss of death to say so, but I feel that the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov is poised on the threshold of a major breakthrough in the West. Not that he is exactly an unknown quantity. He has frequently been mentioned in the same breath as Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaidulina as one of the most talented of the generation of avant-garde-minded former-Soviet composers who came to maturity in the 1960s. And recordings have been appearing, albeit without yet making a huge impact (the cello sonatas on Erato – nla, string quartets on Etcetera, the Postludium on Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, and more orchestral works, recently released on Teldec).
Silvestrov’s uniqueness lies in a curious temperamental mixture of the ascetic and the ecstatic, allied to the extraordinary acuteness of his ear. His style has followed a not unfamiliar route from avant-garde Polish ‘sonoristics’ (as in the 12-minute, single movement Second Symphony for flute, percussion, piano and strings of 1965) through mild polystylism (as in Meditatsiya for cello and chamber orchestra of 1972) to out-and-out sensuous atavism (as in his masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony of 1982, which Sony Classical are releasing any day now). But whatever the surface manner, his music constantly beguiles by virtue of its precisely imagined sonorities. I am tempted to say that in this respect Silvestrov has no rival among post-Shostakovich composers of the former Soviet Union.
The Second Symphony is for me the least interesting musical experience on this disc. In that it never proposes any strong contrast to its meditative pointillism, it might even be felt unworthy of the genre it claims to belong to, though the presence of a burgeoning talent is unmistakable. Maybe we need to imagine the frisson of experimentalism in mid 1960s Kiev in order to understand fully where the music is coming from.
Meditatsiya starts in similar all-purpose-Darmstadt vein, but soon sets out on more intriguing zigzag pathways towards and away from triadic sonorities and romantically consoling textures. The manner is once again predominantly quietist, even in passages of apparent expressionist gesturing, and the sense of vistas opening up in the mind is almost tangible. In the second half Silvestrov pushes the stylistic polarities to wider extremes, risking charges of opportunism, of effects without cause. But helped by a wonderfully sensitive performance from Musica Viva, the piece retains its hypnotic grip, notably in a massively extended, shimmering coda, haunted by all sorts of dimly perceived ghosts.
The Serenade for strings of 1978 shows Silvestrov apparently not quite ready to abandon himself to the sensuous other-worldliness that was to come in the Fifth Symphony. Yet just when the hypersensitive brush-strokes seem to be degenerating into mere doodles, he startles by introducing a visitor from that world-to-come, in the shape of profoundly disconsolate melodic fragments in an unequivocal E flat minor. Eccentric, maybe, but in a compelling world of its own.
All these performances are superb, excellently recorded, and they document one composer’s path towards one of the most treasurable and original voices in the music of our time.'