Valentin Silvestrov - Dialogues & Dedications (2006)

Valentin Vassilevich Silvestrov was born on September 30, 1937 in Kiev. He received his professional education as a composer at the Kiev Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1963 as a pupil of Boris Lyatoshinsky (prior to that he had studied at an evening music school and at a construction institute). He was a winner of the International Sergei Koussevitsky Award in the USA in 1967 and of the International Gaudeamus Competition (1970, the Netherlands). He received the title of a People's Artist of the Ukraine in 1989. Among his works are numerous orchestral compositions (including seven symphonies and a few compositions for solo instrument or solo voice and orchestra), solo and choral cantatas, works for chamber ensemble for various combinations (among them two string quartets, sonatas for violin and cello, the triptych Drama), four piano sonatas and other music for piano as well as numerous vocal compositions with chamber ensemble accompaniment.

Silvestrov's music is performed in numerous European countries and in the USA. Among its performers are such outstanding musicians as Alexei Lubimov, Gidon Kremer, Ivan Monighetti, Tatiana Grindenko, conductors Andrei Boreiko, Dennis Russell Davies, Roman Kofman and David Robertson. Valentin Silvestrov ranks among the most outstanding composers of today. In his music one couldsense an exceptional spiritual saturation and a purity of artistic will. Distancing itself from programmatic concrete nature, avoiding predicant pathos and the least trace of topicality, Silvestrov's music speaks about what is most important - about the human being, who listens attentively to himself and to the surrounding world. According to the composer, "music is not a philosophy, but a song sung by the world about itself, a sort of a musical testimony of existence".

The lyrical nature of Silvestrov's talent lets itself be heard in many particularities of the composer's style. It is manifested in the melodic saturation of the texture, as well as a special kind of economy of means in regards to sound, its birth and fading away. In the chamber compositions, which made up the program of the concert, it reveals itself also in a peculiar dialogue quality. It seems that Silvestrov joins a quiet, serious conversation with the shadows of the classical past, either continuing and elaborating on fragments of the music of Schubert or Wagner or dedicating his own miniatures to them - the fond portraits of Bach, Schubert or Glinka. The motive of the dialogue makes itself known in dedications of another type - in pieces, assigned to be tributes to friends, friends-musicians including the participants of the recorded concert. Two Dialogues with Postface are dedicated to Yuri Polubelov, Moments of Poetry and Music are dedicated to Mark Belomsets, Three Songs to Poems by Gennadi Aigui were presented to Andrei Volkonsky, Lacrimosa - to Tigran Mansurian, the "Post Scriptum" Sonata - to Dieter Rexroth and the Sonata Nr. 2 for piano - to Alexei Lubimov.