The National Symphony Orchestra played works by Valentin Silvestrov

Music / Classical

The National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Vladimir Sirenko performed on the stage of the capital's Philharmonic the works of Valentin Silvestrov - "Widmung" and the Sixth Symphony, for which the author himself has especially reverent feelings. Listened to LYUBOV MOROZOV.

Compared to his colleagues who defined the face of Ukrainian music in the last third of the 20th century—Evgeniy Stankovych and Miroslav Skoryk—Valentin Silvestrov, despite his status as a patriarch, looks like a marginal figure. An eccentric and a hermit, to whom creative freedom and lonely life in a modest apartment on Rusanovka are more valuable than any honors. All his life he remained faithful to his own intimate manner of speaking, in which, of course, it is impossible to glorify the military exploits of Ukrainian princes and hetmans or illustrate pictures of rural life. Silvestrov is a singer of urban culture, and specifically Kyiv culture, and although you won’t find folk motifs in his music, it is capable of expressing national identity no worse than the neo-folklore experiments of his colleagues.

Having written his last major symphonic work, the Seventh Symphony, in 2003, the composer actually went into voluntary schematic life, composing miniatures. His numerous piano bagatelles and hallelujahs, chamber choirs and romances of recent years bear the stamp of a “weak style”, as the author himself defines it, striking listeners with the naivety and touchingness of his opuses. The master recalls his own radical experiences of the 1960-70s reluctantly and even with some annoyance, not particularly welcoming their resurrection in concert, and therefore Silvestrov the avant-garde can now only be heard in recordings.

At the end of September, the composer celebrated his 75th birthday, and this date was celebrated by several Ukrainian musicians and ensembles who performed the master’s works written in the last decade. For the final anniversary concert, conductor Vladimir Sirenko chose two Sylvester scores from the 1990s - the final ones in his symphonic work, as the author himself notes. The first performance of the evening was "Widmung" - a symphony for violin and orchestra, composed by Silvestrov in 1990-1991 for Gidon Kremer. This time the Ukrainian-Swiss violinist Anna Savitskaya-Dzialak was the soloist. She sincerely tried to recreate the author's intonation, but she did not succeed very convincingly, especially for those listeners who remember Kremer's reference recording with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. The musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra coped very well with the technical tasks, and also demonstrated a deep understanding of the author's intent and immersion in the material. The orchestra's performance of the Sixth Symphony also turned out to be successful. In the conductor's interpretation, this generally meditative music revealed considerable dynamics. This was also facilitated by Vladimir Sirenko’s energetic gestures during the lengths of the score, in which the audience also heard recognizable features of the “seething” avant-garde style of the composer of the 1960s. And it seemed to many in the audience that for one evening the performers managed to reconcile the later work of Valentin Silvestrov with his early works.

Reconciliation with yourself