Valentin Silvestrov's music is difficult to describe or classify. It proceeds in small gestures but is not minimalist. It often uses conventional tonality but is not neo-Romantic. Raymond Tuttle writes that "Silvestrov's music is usually in the process of fading into nothing," although it does have large dramatic moments. In this, it is like Federico Mompou's Musica callada, "music that has fallen silent," although the range of Silvestrov's references also gives his music an element of pastiche. Much of his music has ...
Read More
Valentin Silvestrov's music is difficult to describe or classify. It proceeds in small gestures but is not minimalist. It often uses conventional tonality but is not neo-Romantic. Raymond Tuttle writes that "Silvestrov's music is usually in the process of fading into nothing," although it does have large dramatic moments. In this, it is like Federico Mompou's Musica callada, "music that has fallen silent," although the range of Silvestrov's references also gives his music an element of pastiche. Much of his music has appeared on the ECM label, which is ideal for the sparsity of his style, but here's a diverse group of pieces, mostly world premieres from the later part of his career, by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under the versatile Christopher Lyndon-Gee, who also wrote the fine booklet notes. The opening Ode to the Nightingale (to a Russian translation of Keats) is mostly atonal, putting the evanescent aspect in the lyrics. The Piano Concertino has elements of neoclassicism but an...
Read Less
