This album of chamber music is the first in a series of ECM releases by Valentin Silvestrov, intended to spotlight the work of this important Ukrainian composer in the months and years to come. The pieces on the present recording – made with the participation of the composer – were written between 1974 and 2001. Inspired performances by Anja Lechner and Silke Avenhaus, Maacha Deubner and the Rosamunde Quartett bring out the highly individual lyricism and melodic feeling at the heart of Silvestrov’s music. Silvestrov himself adds the "final caesura", with his tender piano performance of his "Hymn 2001".
Valentin Silvestrov: leggiero, pesante
Anja Lechner, Silke Avenhaus, Maacha Deubner, Simon Fordham, Valentin Silvestrov, Rosamunde Quartett
- 1Sonata for violoncello and piano (1983)
22:01 - 2String Quartet No. 1 (1974)
21:07 - Three Postludes
- 3I. Postludium "DSCH"06:53
- 4II. Postludium09:25
- 5III. Postludium04:07
- 6Hymne 2001
06:27
Of all the words in music's vocabulary, one of the commonest is "farewell." Many of the world's greatest songs are addressed to the departing: the recently dead, lost lovers, missed opportunities. Music speaks of these things as memory speaks, makes us aware both of distance and of remaining closeness. Nothing is lost, music says: it is here. But also: it is here only because it cannot come back. ... When it addresses leave-taking specifically, it has terms that include some of the oldest in the Western tradition. A four-note scalewise descent in the minor mode has been an image of lament since the Renaissance, and perhaps it accounts for the atmosphere of sadness that often gathers around minor-key harmony. A final cadence, particularly in slow music, can also sound like a valedicition, because this is the point at which music not only expresses passing but itself recedes.This vanishing and this eternal presence have been the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov's persistent topics through the last three decades, since he was in his 30's and, like his Soviet contemporary Arvo Pärt, heard the past sounding through the gaps in modernism. ...At the opening of the First Quartet, for instance, there are the falling phrases and the omnipresent cadences that convey appeased grief, all at a very relaxed tempo and in a harmonic ambience as straightforward as that of a folk song. The Barber Adagio is only a step away. But then the picture begins to cloud. An expected harmony does not arrive and cannot be found. The instruments start slowly circling because they cannot think what else to do. Inexplicable dissonances creep in. The music seems to be losing its way, and eventually it just comes to a sounding stop on a sustained soft discord, fading into toneless whispers.There is an effort here to refresh aged notions. Because Mr. Silvestrov's turns of phrase are never quite completed - or because any completion sounds partial and tentative - they reach to some extent from the realm of the borrowed to speak firmly and newly. And they help themselves do so both by taking on novel timbres ( the vibratoless sounds of the quartet) and by extending a strong appeal to their performers (an appeal to which a particularly powerful, rich and vital response comes from the cellist Anja Lechner and the pianist Silke Avenhaus in two works).
Paul Griffiths, The New York Times
Heute gehört Silvestrov weit über den Insiderkreis hinaus zu den anerkanntesten Tonschöpfern aus dem osteuropäischen Raum - und zu den interessantesten dazu. Jede Art von Dogmatik ist ihm fremd. Silvestrov zählt zu jenen Vertretern der Avantgarde, deren Musik aus der Stille kommt. Musik, die sich vorantastet, in der Pausen so wichtig sind wie Töne. Musik aus Klängen, die fragend aufscheinen und gleich wieder verglimmen. Musik wie Klangfetzen, die vorüberziehen. Klänge wie Erinnerungen - zart und fern zugleich. Klänge für Zuhörer, die bereit sind, sich der Ruhe dieser anspruchsvollen Musik auszusetzen und in die Welt dieser meditativen Klangbilder einzutauchen.
Jürgen Seeger, Bayerischer Rundfunk CD-Tipp
Eine eigene Welt: kontemplativ, verinnerlicht, intensiv. Der Kiewer Komponist Silvestrov scheint mit ganz wenigen musikalischen Zeichen auszukommen, die er immer wieder in neue Klanglandschaften hineinsenkt. Es sind schlichte Dur-Akkorde, schüchterne Blicke auf Vergangenes, flirrende Umspielungen.
Reinhard Schulz, Neue Musikzeitung
Valentin Silverstrov's brand of musical post-modernism is a more literal one than most. It initially involved an act of voluntary disarmament, as he once put it, when he set aside the trappings of modernism that he had explored as thoroughly as any of his colleagues in the Soviet Union and with a considerable degree of notoriety in his native Ukraine. It also involved, and still involves, an exploration of music "after the death of music". What we seem to hear from him is not real music at all but echoes from some psycho-acoustic pond first stirred into life decades or centuries ago. The Fifth Symphony is the finest example of this Postlude manner, but all the chamber works on this excellent ECM disc are worthy companion pieces. The Cello Sonata was composed in 1983, in the aftermath of the Fifth Symphony, and revisits its characteristic images of oscillation and evanescent melodic beauty, discovered somewhere beyond the ugliness of the real world. ... The First String Quartet of 1973, another single-movement structure of similar length, is comparable gripping. From its familiar-seeming triadic opening the music flutters, nearly expires, and rears up again in Janácekian flurries before finding its psychic equilibrium. ... Bathed in more generous ambience than the Sonata or the Quartet, the Postludes of 1981-82 are like fragments of music you might recall in a clairvoyant moment before death ... Silvestrov's own rendition of Hymn 2001 offers a fascinating glimpse into the performing style he has in mind - everything delivered in a shadowy undertone and heavily pedalled. It makes a fitting conclusion to a beautiful, yet far from unchallenging programme.
David Fanning, International Record Review
Da schreibt jemand eine Musik, die mit wenigen Tönen und Figuren auskommt, harmonisch gebunden bleibt, nur einige, beinahe unscharfe Dissonanzen zulässt, die dem Hörer eher als Farben denn als Störung erscheinen - ein solcher Tonsetzer mag das Feindbild für die Gralshüter Neuer Musik abgeben. ... Silvestrovs erstes Streichquartett, Mitte der 1970er Jahre entstanden, kennt durchaus reine Dur-Dreiklänge, die jedoch mit atonalen Trübungen gekreuzt, konterkariert werden; eine Dialektik, die schließlich dramatisch kulminiert. Gerade hier zeigt sich, welch hohe Qualität sich das Rosamunde Quartett inzwischen erspielt hat, welche Farbigkeit es gestalten kann. Auch die anderen Stücke zeigen reiche Valeurs, etwa die in weiten Bögen ausschwingende Sonate für Cello und Klavier - wunderbar gestaltet von Anja Lechner und Silke Avenhaus.
Tilman Urbach, Fono Forum
Ein wahrhaft hinreißendes und von Energie getragenes Zwiegespräch entfaltet sich in der Cellosonate von 1983 zwischen den unglaublich sensibel aufeinander reagierenden Musikerinnen (Anja Lechner und Silke Avenhaus). Diese Musik verströmt eine derartige Wärme und Intensität, dass man meint, keinem ehrfurchtgebietenden Kunstwerk gegenüberzustehen, sondern an der konzentrierten und kreativen Atmosphäre in der Festeburgkirche in Frankfurt am Main teilzuhaben - denn dort fanden in Zusammenarbeit der durchweg glänzend musizierenden Instrumentalisten vom Rosamunde Quartett und Valentin Silvestrov selber die Aufnahmen für diese neue CD statt. Fünf kammermusikalische Werke aus den Jahren 1974 bis 1983 sowie die vom Komponisten interpretierte, in traumverlorenem Ton dem großen russischen Dichter Ossip Mandelstam gewidmete "Hymne 2001" für Klavier sind darauf zu hören - und zu genießen, so man freilich solch kühn-charmante Gestrigkeit heute noch ertragen kann.
Anja Lachmann, Musik & Theater
Valentin Silvestrov gehörte in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion zur experimentierfreudigen, unabhängigen "Avantgarde von Kiew" und war dann einer der Ersten, welche eine spezifisch russisch-ukrainische Postmoderne schufen. In der Musik der Vergangenheit geht er auf Spurensuche. Vorgefundenes, das ihn bewegt, wird umgeschmolzen in ein Neues. Es verweist auf das Gewesene, seine Atmosphäre, seine Substanz und steht doch in einem neuen Zusammenhang. So entstanden seit den siebziger Jahren weniger polystilistische Gebilde als Bündelungen von Andeutungen zeichenhafter Inhalte. Beispielhaft geschah dies im Streichquartett No. 1 von 1974. Assoziationsreich, bildhaft ist sein Ton. Und unverkennbar eigen. Die Klangereignisse werden für den gegenwärtigen Augenblick inszeniert, und selten kann Musik so deutlich als ein in der Gegenwart vorbeiziehendes Geschehen erlebt werden wie in diesem Werk. Die Sonate für Violoncello und Klavier (1983) gestaltet den Erlebnisraum durch ihren Klang, verändert, vergrössert oder verkleinert ihn, ohne sich seiner so zu bemächtigen, dass einem der Atem erstickt. Ihr Gestus ist improvisatorisch, sprechend, ohne inneren Druck. Ein Album poetischer Klänge. Bis zum Äußersten hat Silvestrov seine Auseinandersetzung mit der (russischen) Romantik in den "Drei Postludien" (1981/82) ausgereizt. Sie beginnen als romantische Elegien, um dann dekomponiert zu werden. ... Alle drei Werke sind samt einer kurzen, von Silvestrov selber am Klavier interpretierten "Hymne 2001" auf einer neuen Veröffentlichung des Münchener Labels ECM versammelt, und zwar in exemplarischen, sehr auratischen Interpretationen. Insbesondere beim vom Rosamunde-Quartett unglaublich gut gespielten Streichquartett hat man den Eindruck, dass hier ein interpretatorisches Kunstwerk speziell für das Medium Compact Disc und seine klanglichen, räumlichen und dynamischen Möglichkeiten geschafffen wurde.
Alfred Zimmerlin, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
This album of chamber music is the first in a series of ECM New Series releases by Valentin Silvestrov, intended to spotlight the work of this important Ukrainian composer in the months and years to come. In addition to the present disc, ECM has already recorded Silvestrov's "Metamusik" and "Postludium" (with Alexander Lubimov, Dennis Russell Davies and the RSO Wien), and "Requiem" (with the Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Sirenko, and the choir Dumka under the direction of Evgeny Savchuk). Further Silvestrov releases in preparation include the remarkable cycle "Silent Songs" (1974/77) for voice and piano.
Valentin Silvestrov was born in 1937. He studied piano at the Kiev Evening Music School (1955-58), and composition, harmony and counterpoint at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Kiev from 1958 to 1964. Silvestrov was alert from the outset to new compositional approaches, and an individual lyricism and melodic feeling have been hallmarks of his work through all periods of his artistic development, irrespective of musical styles or systems employed. Together with Leonid Grabovsky, he counts as the leading figure of the "Kiev Avant-garde", which by 1960 was experimenting with 12-tone and aleatoric music and music theatre, in contradistinction to the generally conservative mood of Ukrainian composition.
His early work was briefly heard outside the Soviet Union in the late 1960s: Bruno Maderna conducted Silvestrov's Third Symphony in Darmstadt in 1968, and Boulez presented his work in one of the Domaine Musical concerts. By this point, however, Silvestrov was already distancing himself from dominant trends in modern music.
As musicologist Frans C. Lemaire has noted: "Silvestrov [in 1969] ponders over the meaning of his music, the relation between the past and all things which escape the mechanism of time. He dwells on the relation between historical culture on the one hand and the magical, primitive and perpetual dimension of inspiration ... This is where Silvestrov's music takes a highly interesting and distinctive turn. It becomes impregnated with a slow expressive confidence and exhibits greatly prolonged melodic lines in a post romantic climate that is often reminiscent of Gustav Mahler."
Silvestrov was one of the first composers from the former Soviet Union to cast aside what might be called the "conventional" gestures of the avant-garde, as well as any sense of formulaic "experimentalism". As he has perceptively noted, "the most important lesson of the avant-garde was to be free of all preconceived ideas - particularly those of the avant-garde." This perspective led to the development of an idiom which Silvestrov would eventually come to call "metaphorical style" or "meta-music".
The pieces on the present recording (made with the participation of the composer) were written between 1974 and 2001. The album concludes with the première recording of "Hymn 2001", played by Silvestrov himself on piano.
It opens, however, with his intriguing "Sonata for Cello and Piano" of 1983, performed here by Anja Lechner and Silke Avenhaus. In her liner notes, musicologist Tatjana Frumkis writes, "What is entirely unique is the form of the sonata, which stands aloof from the typical structure of the sonata form. This one-movement work follows a different logic; it is informed by a different, hidden meaning. An impetuous, creative gesture opens up a sonic space: a gentle melody on the cello, solicitously underlaid by the 'palms of the piano's hands' (Silvestrov), a muffled murmuring of both instruments ... Everything is pervaded by the effort of commencing, by expectations that it will take the golden section of the work to fulfil. Melody as 'consolation, dedication, catharsis.' Silvestrov's work abounds with such events: they grow from inside, from quiet listening." Such 'events' are not easily snared by even skilled interpreters, and the performers on this recording were glad of Silvestrov's input, both at the session itself and in rehearsals.
Anja Lechner: "It was very important for us to work with Silvestrov. On the printed page his music can seem overloaded with instructions to the player - each bar is freighted with dynamics, ritardandi, accelerandi, and tempo markings. After having internalized all these playing instructions, at the end what is important is that the music should breathe, move and travel like a composed improvisation. I'm a musician who thought she knew what a pianissimo is, because I had always loved to play really softly, when it is needed. But when I met Silvestrov I realised that I still was at the beginning of knowing what it means to play a real pianissimo. He harassed us about still playing too loudly in every phrase. But when he sat down at the piano and played something for us, he introduced us to the most intimate, sensitive, tender, breakable yet still speaking pianissimo. After that, we all understood."
Silke Avenhaus: "Silvestrov is obsessed with the details of the music. Although they don't sound remotely like each other, there are parallels to working with Kurtág, who will also take you deeper and deeper into the sound, into the dynamics." Avenhaus emphasises that for the musician "an intellectual approach to Silvestrov's compositions is absolutely insufficient." The player must feel his or her way into the music to gain a sense of its many subtleties and its emotional depth.
The "String Quartet No. 1" from 1974 is a transitional piece in the composer's oeuvre, embracing romantic, atonal, dodecaphonic, and aleatoric gestures in the course of its subtle flow. Silvestrov likened the opening theme to "a poem about the fate of music in the last two hundred years" The piece has become a staple of the Rosamunde Quartett's concert programme in recent seasons; they negotiate its shadowy and echoic regions with finesse. During the recording, they were aided by the composer, who guided them through its meticulously graded dynamics.
The "Three Postludes" are from 1981/82, and may be performed independently or as a cycle. Postlude I here features the bell-like singing of Maacha Deubner, best known perhaps for her radiant performance of Giya Kancheli's "Exil" (ECM New Series 1535). This first Postlude "decodes" the famous musical monogram of Dmitri Shostakovich (a crucial influence for Silvestrov, as for so many ex Soviet composers), offered as a requiem for a great master.
"Postlude II", for solo violin, is played by the Rosamunde Quartett's Simon Fordham. Tatjana Frumkis: "It is a contemplative song with moments of silence, the characteristic parallelisms and 'Gothic' cadences recalling a canzona da sonar. The melody is enlaced with mysterious, exotic sounds, then suddenly breaks off."
The third Postlude, played by Anja Lechner and Silke Avenhaus, seems to take up the melody from the "Sonata for Cello and Piano" heard earlier, although the influence runs the other way. Historically, the postlude was a "prelude" to the sonata, and was written a year earlier.
Valentin Silvestrov himself adds the "final caesura", with his tender performance of his "Hymn 2001".
Anja Lechner: "Silvestrov has said 'I must write what pleases me and not what others like, not - to quote an apt saying - what the age dictates to me. Otherwise I'm at the mercy of an economic cycle that cripples the imagination. ... I must seek beauty.' And that's something that's very hard to say in our time, and easily misunderstood. In central European new music such words are habitually rejected: beauty, feeling, soul ..."
Valentin Silvestrov was born in 1937. He studied piano at the Kiev Evening Music School (1955-58), and composition, harmony and counterpoint at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Kiev from 1958 to 1964. Silvestrov was alert from the outset to new compositional approaches, and an individual lyricism and melodic feeling have been hallmarks of his work through all periods of his artistic development, irrespective of musical styles or systems employed. Together with Leonid Grabovsky, he counts as the leading figure of the "Kiev Avant-garde", which by 1960 was experimenting with 12-tone and aleatoric music and music theatre, in contradistinction to the generally conservative mood of Ukrainian composition.
His early work was briefly heard outside the Soviet Union in the late 1960s: Bruno Maderna conducted Silvestrov's Third Symphony in Darmstadt in 1968, and Boulez presented his work in one of the Domaine Musical concerts. By this point, however, Silvestrov was already distancing himself from dominant trends in modern music.
As musicologist Frans C. Lemaire has noted: "Silvestrov [in 1969] ponders over the meaning of his music, the relation between the past and all things which escape the mechanism of time. He dwells on the relation between historical culture on the one hand and the magical, primitive and perpetual dimension of inspiration ... This is where Silvestrov's music takes a highly interesting and distinctive turn. It becomes impregnated with a slow expressive confidence and exhibits greatly prolonged melodic lines in a post romantic climate that is often reminiscent of Gustav Mahler."
Silvestrov was one of the first composers from the former Soviet Union to cast aside what might be called the "conventional" gestures of the avant-garde, as well as any sense of formulaic "experimentalism". As he has perceptively noted, "the most important lesson of the avant-garde was to be free of all preconceived ideas - particularly those of the avant-garde." This perspective led to the development of an idiom which Silvestrov would eventually come to call "metaphorical style" or "meta-music".
The pieces on the present recording (made with the participation of the composer) were written between 1974 and 2001. The album concludes with the première recording of "Hymn 2001", played by Silvestrov himself on piano.
It opens, however, with his intriguing "Sonata for Cello and Piano" of 1983, performed here by Anja Lechner and Silke Avenhaus. In her liner notes, musicologist Tatjana Frumkis writes, "What is entirely unique is the form of the sonata, which stands aloof from the typical structure of the sonata form. This one-movement work follows a different logic; it is informed by a different, hidden meaning. An impetuous, creative gesture opens up a sonic space: a gentle melody on the cello, solicitously underlaid by the 'palms of the piano's hands' (Silvestrov), a muffled murmuring of both instruments ... Everything is pervaded by the effort of commencing, by expectations that it will take the golden section of the work to fulfil. Melody as 'consolation, dedication, catharsis.' Silvestrov's work abounds with such events: they grow from inside, from quiet listening." Such 'events' are not easily snared by even skilled interpreters, and the performers on this recording were glad of Silvestrov's input, both at the session itself and in rehearsals.
Anja Lechner: "It was very important for us to work with Silvestrov. On the printed page his music can seem overloaded with instructions to the player - each bar is freighted with dynamics, ritardandi, accelerandi, and tempo markings. After having internalized all these playing instructions, at the end what is important is that the music should breathe, move and travel like a composed improvisation. I'm a musician who thought she knew what a pianissimo is, because I had always loved to play really softly, when it is needed. But when I met Silvestrov I realised that I still was at the beginning of knowing what it means to play a real pianissimo. He harassed us about still playing too loudly in every phrase. But when he sat down at the piano and played something for us, he introduced us to the most intimate, sensitive, tender, breakable yet still speaking pianissimo. After that, we all understood."
Silke Avenhaus: "Silvestrov is obsessed with the details of the music. Although they don't sound remotely like each other, there are parallels to working with Kurtág, who will also take you deeper and deeper into the sound, into the dynamics." Avenhaus emphasises that for the musician "an intellectual approach to Silvestrov's compositions is absolutely insufficient." The player must feel his or her way into the music to gain a sense of its many subtleties and its emotional depth.
The "String Quartet No. 1" from 1974 is a transitional piece in the composer's oeuvre, embracing romantic, atonal, dodecaphonic, and aleatoric gestures in the course of its subtle flow. Silvestrov likened the opening theme to "a poem about the fate of music in the last two hundred years" The piece has become a staple of the Rosamunde Quartett's concert programme in recent seasons; they negotiate its shadowy and echoic regions with finesse. During the recording, they were aided by the composer, who guided them through its meticulously graded dynamics.
The "Three Postludes" are from 1981/82, and may be performed independently or as a cycle. Postlude I here features the bell-like singing of Maacha Deubner, best known perhaps for her radiant performance of Giya Kancheli's "Exil" (ECM New Series 1535). This first Postlude "decodes" the famous musical monogram of Dmitri Shostakovich (a crucial influence for Silvestrov, as for so many ex Soviet composers), offered as a requiem for a great master.
"Postlude II", for solo violin, is played by the Rosamunde Quartett's Simon Fordham. Tatjana Frumkis: "It is a contemplative song with moments of silence, the characteristic parallelisms and 'Gothic' cadences recalling a canzona da sonar. The melody is enlaced with mysterious, exotic sounds, then suddenly breaks off."
The third Postlude, played by Anja Lechner and Silke Avenhaus, seems to take up the melody from the "Sonata for Cello and Piano" heard earlier, although the influence runs the other way. Historically, the postlude was a "prelude" to the sonata, and was written a year earlier.
Valentin Silvestrov himself adds the "final caesura", with his tender performance of his "Hymn 2001".
Anja Lechner: "Silvestrov has said 'I must write what pleases me and not what others like, not - to quote an apt saying - what the age dictates to me. Otherwise I'm at the mercy of an economic cycle that cripples the imagination. ... I must seek beauty.' And that's something that's very hard to say in our time, and easily misunderstood. In central European new music such words are habitually rejected: beauty, feeling, soul ..."
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