Most contemporary composers seem driven to find some new way of making music, to reinvent the sound wheel. But a few managed to mature past the mad scientist phase to simply create art that resonates timelessly.
I stumbled onto one of the most purely expressive and traditionally grounded of living composers in the mid-1990s, when the five major record companies were still churning out CDs as fast as they could and shipping out review copies to anyone who would write about them. Over a couple years, two different recordings of the same symphony arrived in the mail to capture my ear.
It was Valentin Silvestrov’s 1982 Symphony No. 5. I became a devotee.
Acclaimed in Europe and the former Soviet republics, the prolific 80-year-old Ukrainian composer is one of the most profound voices in contemporary music, a composer whose music both seems to flow naturally from within. Much like his peer Alfred Schnittke, Silvestrov turned his back on the academicism of atonality and modernism to develop his own voice: "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.” Silvestrov has written a number of works he calls “postlude,” because to him, all the fertile musical ground has been stampeded already, and he can only recapitulate, using all that went before as a toolbox. His short works for piano and voice are distinctly elegiac.
His music is calm and meditative, and he has followed the path of Arvo Part, finding solace late in life writing chorale music. Silvestrov’s compositions are very much based upon suspending time, but he does not create the static sonic wallpaper represented in far too many contemporary works. He spins out scraps of melody that bore into your central nervous system … just as Bach and Schubert did.
In the liner notes for “Requiem for Larissa,” Paul Griffiths writes, “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. A melody, which will rarely extend through more than five or six notes, will have each of those notes sounding on, sustained by other voices or instruments, creating a lasting aura.”
To sample Silvestrov’s music, let’s start with the song “Letzte liebe” (“Last love”), one of 11 stunning “quiet songs” from the 1989 recording of this cycle, entitled “Lliederzyklus Stufen.
Ten years later, in this set of “Stufen,” Silvestrov retains this focus in the calm (always calm) drama of the song “What Are You For, Days?” The question clearly goes unanswered …
The wonderful pianist Jenny Lin (don’t miss her Shostakovich preludes and fugues) recorded a wonderful album of Silvestrov’s piano works, an artistically endearing venture, since Silvestrov’s piano music is anything but showy. But his ability to alter your sense of time with losing his sense of direction, to leave the listener holding his breath in calm anticipation, is masterful. Here is the title track from Lin’s recording, “Nostalgia.”
Silvestrov has been immensely prolific, in orchestral, chamber and choral music. Recently, Silvestrov has faded farther back in his postludes, basing choral works on tradition Eastern Orthodox liturgical voicings, such as this ethereal section for a 2006 recording of his cantatas that blends old ideas and new ones.
All of which brings us to his masterpiece, his Fifth Symphony. This is one of two recordings in the catalog, a fine 2010 set by Jukka-Pekka Saraste leading the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.
The Fifth is one long arc, a drama that opens as if a conclusion, the smoking rubble of a ruined soundscape, ominous and uneasy. But this most lyrical of composers weaves melodic motifs rising from growling sonic tectonic plates. At times these powerful scraps in low brass seem downright Wagnerian in both character and soaring reach.
The first such lyricism starts in a violin around 2:30, and the massed strings present the gorgeous central motif at 4:00, pushing back against the dread. A new theme rises at 10:30 slowly (yes, it’s all slow) in horns while the winds and harp glitter above.
This is music of great depth made of shimmering layers of sound. The dark horn motif returns in the center of the symphony, presenting something of a crisis, before the calm returns. As a symphony, it lacks what we usually think of as development. The motifs reoccur more as memories than as narrative.
Here it is, a contemplative 40-minute journey through a unique sound world.
Had you been aware of Silvestrov? Is this too calm for our ADD world?
Whenever we look through a family album of old photographs, most of us ask "Who is this?" not "Who was this?" Photographs are always present tense, and so are all the elements of life the enrich us. This blog considers music, film, books and other communications that call out to me always in the present tense.
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