Valentin Silvestrov

“Music is still song, even if one cannot literally sing it: it is not a philosophy, not a world-view. It is, above all, a chant, a song the world sings about itself, it is the musical testimony to life."

Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt have both called the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov "one of the greatest composers of our time”. He is also one of its true originals; though a leading figure in the former Soviet Union’s avant-garde in the 1960s, he subsequently came to realise that "the most important lesson of the avant-garde was to be free of all preconceived ideas – particularly those of the avant-garde."

Silvestrov was born in Kiev in 1937 and studied the piano at Kiev Evening Music School, then composition, harmony and counterpoint at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His early experimental orientation meant that his work received official criticism in the Soviet Union and, despite [...]

Over time, Silvestrov’s compositional practice evolved into what he would come to call his “metaphorical style” or “meta-music.” The composer wishes his works to be seen as “codas” to musical history because “fewer and fewer texts are possible which… begin at the beginning”. He has declared that “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.” And although it may sound that the end-point of such a philosophy must inevitably be silence, Silvestrov has repeatedly proved what a uniquely fertile compositional space this postludial domain can be. Malcolm MacDonald put it more poetically; Silvestrov, he wrote, composes not the lament itself “but the lingering memory of it”.

The first of a series of CDs from ECM devoted to the composer’s work was leggiero, pesante (2001), a disc of his chamber music featuring the Rosamunde Quartett and the composer himself. Pianist Alexei Lubimov, a champion of the composer’s work, appeared in two concertante works on Metamusik/Postludium, and Requiem for Larissa presented Silvestrov’s deeply moving commemoration of his late wife. As Paul Griffiths wrote in his liner notes: "Time in Valentin Silvestrov's music is a black lake. The water barely moves; the past refuses to slide away; and the slow, irregular stirrings of an oar remain in place. Nothing is lost here”.

In 2004 a different, but equally intimate view of the composer’s sound world was provided by the release of a 1986 recording of his cycle of Silent Songs, works which, to quote Griffiths again, “we may feel we have always known”, such is their hushed, whispered quality. Releases of sacred music and the monumental Symphony No. 6 have since followed; of the latter, the BBC’s Andrew McGregor said: “Like so much Silverstov, you don't have to know how or why it works to be deeply affected by it. It feels simple, yet it obviously isn't; it's profoundly beautiful, timeless, and unforgettable”.