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Valentyn Sylvestrov at 85
Arguably the best-known classical composer hailing from Ukraine, the musical trajectory of Valentyn Sylvestrov (born in Kyiv in 1937) from his formative education to the present day may sound rather familiar. Like so many post-Soviet composers (in particular Arvo Pärt), Sylvestrov initially adopted a radical, modernist style that he would later come to question and largely reject. Like Pärt, too, his music has been especially championed on Manfred Eicher's ECM label.
The last few decades have seen Sylvestrov abandon much of the avant-garde and instead revisit a tonal sound-world, influenced by spiritual elements. The seeds of this were already being sown even while he was studying at the Kyiv Conservatory in his twenties and thirties; Sylvestrov recalled presenting a modernist work to Borys Lyatoshynsky and being deeply influenced by the older composer's simple question: "Do you like this?"
Sylvestrov briefly hit the news in March 2022, when in the wake of the Russian invasion he was hastily evacuated to Poland through the efforts of pianist Alexei Lubimov, eventually settling in Berlin where he currently lives. Although this was Sylvestrov's most personal encounter with Russian military intervention in Europe, it was not his first; in 1968 he walked out of an official composers' gathering in protest at the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and his refusal to recant this stance under official pressure led to him becoming something of a musical recluse. It was at this point – perhaps not coincidentally – that his interest in Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox sacred music began to develop, finding expression in a number of sacred works in Ukrainian, Russian and Slavonic. The significant loosening of artistic restrictions that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union would allow this side of Sylvestrov's music to flourish.
Where Sylvestrov differs from some of his other prominent post-Soviet colleagues is in his more noticeable embrace of nationalism, setting texts by the nineteenth-century Ukrainian nationalist writer Taras Shevchenko and indeed subsequently rededicating some of those works explicitly to the memory of protestors killed during the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in 2014. More recently, his large-scale choral work Maidan 2014, newly recorded by the Kyiv Chamber Choir, forms a direct and emphatic response to the events of that year and all that it has since unleashed.
Note on transliteration: Like many other organisations, since the 2022 invasion Presto Music has been reconsidering our approach to Ukrainian orthography, in order to de-emphasise imposed Russian spellings. Older publications, and even some relatively recent material, may still use "Kiev", "Silvestrov" etc.
Orchestral works
This album includes the world premiere recording of the Beethoven-inspired Pastorales 2020, commissioned by the Odessa Classics Festival (this year taking place in exile in Thessaloniki, Tallinn, Bonn and Vilnius), as well as works inspired by Chopin, Bach and Tchaikovsky. The project originated in a live concert of Sylvestrov's music in Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in March 2022, at which the composer, a newly-arrived refugee, gave a passionate and outraged speech.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
These two organic, single-movement symphonies (dating from the 1970s and 80s) see Sylvestrov wrestle with what he saw as the "death" of the symphony as a genre; drawing on the cosmic mysticism of Scriabin and the Romanticism of Mahler, he looks back to the past in search of a lost ideal of beauty.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental & chamber works
Valentin Silvestrov - Bagatellen und Serenaden
Valentyn Sylvestrov (piano) & Alexei Lubimov (piano), Munich Chamber Orchestra, Christoph Poppen
Featuring the composer himself at the piano, this recording reveals a lyrical and intimate side of his music; the Bagatelles emerge as delicate miniatures of almost Einaudian simplicity, while the various Serenades paint a picture of melancholy and wistfulness.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The four sonatas on this album date from the 1970s and 1980s, when Sylvestrov's move towards lyricism and tonality was still in progress; even in the more harmonically avant-garde moments, the music (and Lubimov's playing) remains gentle and even diffident.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Valentin Silvestrov: Cello Sonata, String Quartet etc.
Anja Lechner (cello), Silke Avenhaus (piano), Rosamunde Quartett
One of Sylvestrov's more dissonant works, the string quartet features shimmering tone-clusters and moments of borderline atonal chaos. Subsiding back into a quieter mood at its end, it nevertheless offers no sense of closure but instead disappears into whispered fragments.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Including not just the three numbered sonatas but the earlier Classical Sonata (an example of Sylvestrov's neo-classical style) and 2001's Nostalghia, this album shows the composer's evolving approach to the piano throughout his career.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Choral & vocal works
Composed in response to the mass pro-Western protests of 2014, Maidan 2014 is a large-scale oratorio incorporating five different settings of the words of the Ukrainian national anthem, sacred texts from the Requiem Mass and elsewhere, and patriotic imagery from Shevchenko and others. Named for the square that formed the epicentre of the demonstrations, both it and the album as a whole are worlds away from Sylvestrov's pre-war works. Where the piano Bagatelles were a gently rippling stream, the "roars and bellows" of the "mighty Dnieper" that the work twice invokes call to mind the mood of Smetana's Vltava in full flow.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Valentin Silvestrov: Silent Songs
Sergey Yakovenko (baritone), Ilya Scheps (piano), Valentyn Sylvestrov (piano)
Clearly following in the footsteps of Mahler and Richard Strauss, these deeply expressive and at times achingly world-weary songs are sung with great sensitivity and vulnerability by Yakovenko.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
This collection of Sylvestrov's harmonically rich sacred works made a huge impression on me when it was released in 2015; the writing and performances are smooth and easy on the ear, and yet consistently pack an emotional punch. The two Christmas Lullabies that close the album are particularly magical.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Valentin Silvestrov: Requiem für Larissa
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Munich Radio Orchestra, Andres Mustonen
Whereas much of Sylvestrov's spiritual and religious music is characterised by a clear political dimension, this Requiem is first and foremost deeply personal, mourning the sudden death of his wife Larissa in 1996. It is a work characterised not by hellfire and damnation, nor by comfort for the living, but by simple lamentation. Yet even here Sylvestrov's politics are not entirely absent, with the addition of verses from Shevchenko's valedictory poem The Dream giving a subtle Ukrainian emphasis.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
David Smith - Head of Digital
