Valentin Silvestrov

This disc is devoted to early works by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, born in Kiev on 30 September 1937, written between 1965 and 1977 and heard in historical concert and studio recordings conducted by Igor Blazhkov. Already in 1967 Silvestrov, who calls himself a “lyricist and poet in music”, wrote that in his first works his goal had been a lyrical atmosphere, and that credo has not changed since.

Blazhkov leads a different group in each work: an ensemble of soloists of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra, the chamber orchestra Perpetuum Mobile and the Kiev Chamber Orchestra, with the soprano Nelly Lee, the cellist Valentin Potapov and the baritone Yuri Olijnik. Spectrums was recorded in concert at the Leningrad Academic Chapel on 12 December 1965, the Second Symphony at the Leningrad Philharmonic on 31 March 1968 and Meditation in Kiev on 10 June 1976. The Cantata (1983) and the final song (1991) are studio recordings made in Kiev. Gerhardt Tses produced the Leningrad recordings and Leonid Bylchynsky those from Kiev, and Tatjana Frumkis wrote the notes. The five works fill 76 minutes.

Spectrums (1965), a symphony in three movements for chamber orchestra, began as music for Kiev Frescoes, a film by Sergei Parajanov that was never realised. Silvestrov described the Symphony No. 2 (1965) for flute, percussion, piano and strings as “a madrigal without words, through which a melodic wind blows”: the flute is heard through a curtain of string and percussion clusters. Meditation (1972), a symphony for cello and orchestra over 32 minutes long, takes its title in the Western sense, as a symbolic sonata form striving for unity. The Cantata (1973) for soprano and chamber orchestra joins night-landscape poems by Fyodor Tyutchev and Alexander Blok into a strange nocturne.

The closing Farewell, O World...! sets lines from Taras Shevchenko's poem A Dream, from the cycle Silent Songs (1974-77), in Blazhkov's 1991 orchestration for baritone and chamber orchestra. Sopilka (a Ukrainian flute) and bandura (a plucked instrument) join the string quartet and underline the song's folk character.

CD, Wergo WER 6731 2, released in 2014, with remastered recordings.