Valentin Silvestrov: Silent Songs

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Silvestrov has the uncanny ability to concentrate your attention on music that's almost entirely slow paced and rendered at levels that rarely rise above pianissimo. Nowhere is that gift more evident that in his Silent Songs, a cycle of 24 songs for baritone and piano with texts drawn from a wide variety of poets from Pushkin, Shelley, and Mandelstam to the less familiar, at least to American audiences (Tyutchev and Zhukovsky). The songs have a deceptive simplicity; the texts illuminated by chaste, lovely, instantly appealing melodies, but the musical journeys of each song have an adventurous complexity that reveals even greater depths with repeated hearings. To say these performances are sympathetic would be a gross understatement. Although Sergey Yakovenko is asked to sing sotto voce throughout, and in a cruelly high tessitura for a baritone, he is superb, singing with a commitment and inwardness that draws the listener in. Pianist Ilya Scheps has Silvestrov's unique idiom in his fingers, and his postludes, some of them extensive, are summations of each song's meaning. Silvestrov himself accompanies Yakovenko in the Mandelstam cycle of four songs, a radiant close to a set of ethereal beauty. --Dan Davis

Valentin Silvestrov: Silent Songs, Music, Alexander Pushkin, Serguei Yakovenko, Valentin Vasil'yevich Silvestrov, Ilya Scheps, Valentin Vasil'yevich Silvestrov, Chamber Music & Recitals, Classical, Classical Composers, Vocal, Vocal Music

Average customer rating:

The most significant lieder cycle of the 20th century.

intimate in the extreme...

Haunting, yet disturbingly comforting.

Valentin Silvestrov: Silent Songs

Manufacturer: Ecm Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Chamber Music | Forms & Genres | Classical (c.1770-1830) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music
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Silvestrov: Metamusik, Postludium

Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No.5 / Postludium - Alexei Lubimov / Berlin German Symphony Orchestra / David Robertson

Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No. 6

ASIN: B0002XV2UM
Release Date: 2004-10-19

Tracks:

Song Can Tend The Ailing Spirit
There Were Some Storms And Blizzards
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
O Melancholy Time
Farewell, O World, O Earth
What Meaning Has My Name For You?
I Will Tell You With Unswerving Frankness
I'm Drinking To Mary
Winter Journey
White, A Solitary Sail
I Met You
The Isle

Tracks:

Something Tender, Blue, Unspoken
Autumn Song
Swamps And Marshes
Winter Evening
When The Cornfield, Yellowing, Stirs
I Set Out On The Road Alone
Mountain Summits
Elegy. Verses Composed At Night, At A time Of Insomnia
Choral. A Vengeful God
Meditation. It's Time, My Friend, It's Time!
Ode. Schubert On Water
Postludium. Those Sweet Companions
My Lashes Are Pricking
I Don't Know When
For The Thunderous Grandeur Of Ages To Come
The Oaks Drink From A Cold Vessel

Amazon.com

Silvestrov has the uncanny ability to concentrate your attention on music that's almost entirely slow paced and rendered at levels that rarely rise above pianissimo. Nowhere is that gift more evident that in his Silent Songs, a cycle of 24 songs for baritone and piano with texts drawn from a wide variety of poets from Pushkin, Shelley, and Mandelstam to the less familiar, at least to American audiences (Tyutchev and Zhukovsky). The songs have a deceptive simplicity; the texts illuminated by chaste, lovely, instantly appealing melodies, but the musical journeys of each song have an adventurous complexity that reveals even greater depths with repeated hearings. To say these performances are sympathetic would be a gross understatement. Although Sergey Yakovenko is asked to sing sotto voce throughout, and in a cruelly high tessitura for a baritone, he is superb, singing with a commitment and inwardness that draws the listener in. Pianist Ilya Scheps has Silvestrov's unique idiom in his fingers, and his postludes, some of them extensive, are summations of each song's meaning. Silvestrov himself accompanies Yakovenko in the Mandelstam cycle of four songs, a radiant close to a set of ethereal beauty. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

The most significant lieder cycle of the 20th century........2006-10-23

I've noticed that most significant lieder cycles are usually qualified as being "the [fill in the blank] version of Schubert's Winterreise." So Eisler's Hollywood Songbook becomes the American (or German, or Post-serialist, or even Socialist) Winterreise, and so on. In spite of how annoying this trend might be, I really think Silvestrov's Silent Songs deserves the title "The 20th-century Winterreise."

Why? No only is the cycle aching beautiful, but there lurk within it depths of what one might call extra-musical resonance as well. Silent Songs were composed after Silvestrov was expelled from the Soviet Composer's Union in 1974. His public career as a composer was over, and he turned to the ultimate "private" genre - the lied. What had once been the favoured parlour music becomes in Silvestrov's hands a kind of commentary on the nature of privacy itself - enforced privacy, in his case. Thus the emotions which each song here evokes run the range between amused introspection and despair, with lonliness colouring all. There are times when the feeling that these songs are truly "silent" - that we genuinely within someone's mind, listening to their every thought - becomes almost claustrophobic.

The engineers place the baritone's voice every so slightly forward, and what would normally sound like a mistake works to highlight the sense of uncomfortable closeness between the voice and the listener. This is ECM's finest release of Silvestrov's work, and that's saying a whole lot. Could we have the symphonies now, please?

intimate in the extreme..........2004-11-18

...and that can be a wonderful thing. In the case of this recording, it's one factor that makes it one of the most moving and beautiful I've heard in some time.

One reviewer (I can't recall where I read it, sorry...) said that it felt as if Yokovenko was singing right into the ear of the listener -- and that's a very apt characterization. The notes by the pianist in the booklet recall preparing to perform the songs on the concert stage for the first time, in Moscow, in 1985. He cites the preparation and the performance as one of the happiest moments of his artistic life -- it shows in his performance, as well as in that of baritone Sergey Yokovenko. The opportunity to present a program such as this, with the challenges and rewards that it embodies, is a rare one.

The texts are from a variety of poets -- Pushkin, Baratynsky, Sehvchenko, Mandelstam, Yesenin and other Russians, as well as Western icons Keats and Shelley. Whether Russian or Western in their source, the pieces here are universally beautiful -- the translations are provided in the booklet (as usual with ECM releases, the packaging is first-rate), but this music speaks directly to the soul of the listener. The emotion it carries needs no translation.

As I listen to this recording, I can easily imagine that the music is being performed for me alone -- but I'll be generous and share it with everyone. I can't recommend this CD highly enough -- heartfelt thanks to ECM for making it available. I encourage listeners who are unfamiliar with Silvestrov's work to check out some of the other ECM packages of his music, such as REQUIEM FOR LARISSA; LEGGIERO, PESANTE; and METAMUSIK, POSTLUDIUM.

Haunting, yet disturbingly comforting........2004-11-12

Silvestrov delivers power through the simplicity of piano and an introspectively shaky baritone. The message of the melodies preclude the need for translation--this music touches the heart and exemplifies the adage "music is the universal language". Yet, lugbrious and oftentimes languishing, the tenor of the recording is very melanacholy. But, the listener can somehow relate to the deep emotion of the composer. You can feel as if he speaks from his entire life and experience and expects closure. A few songs glimpse hope found in disaster (see track 9 on the first CD), but a complete attention to the entire recording renders satisfaction.
A fine mix of simplicity, genius, comfort, and haunting soul exposure. A great example of the depth of the Ukrainian spirit, as well as a tribute to their wonderful (and sometimes neglected)contribution to music.