Valentin Silvestrov's four-part Silent Songs is like no other song cycle you've heard. Completely eschewing overt expression, drama, and vocalism, lasting nearly two hours in performance, and remaining always as soft as humanly possible, it drifts through the air in an irresolute haze -- never competing for your attention, but never allowing you to forget it's there. The effect is as close to that of ambient music as vocal music can get: affecting you, but on mostly unconscious levels. How you respond will depend on your ability to accept the work on its own terms: it never lets up; it never gets faster, louder, or more dramatic; and it never goes out of its way to help you understand what's going on. Instead it just floats there, shimmering, ebbing just enough to remind you that it's breathing, but never enough to shatter the quietude. If you can adjust your ears to the reality that there is no "payoff," and no robust counterweight to all of that delicacy, you may find it transfixing. Otherwise it will drive you nuts.
Baritone
Serguei Yakovenko and pianist Ilya Scheps go the distance for
Silvestrov on this ECM release, which was actually recorded for the Russian Melodiya label in 1986, but not issued. The restraint is remarkable, especially for
Yakovenko, who sings two hours of music without ever revealing the full sound of his voice. Instead, he spends nearly every second in a very specialized half-voice, so nearly whispered that it's sometimes inaudible. And Scheps' pianism is miraculously even-keeled, establishing impossibly fine gradations of softness and sticking with them for many minutes on end. The commitment of both musicians makes this as perfect a realization of
Silvestrov's vision as is ever likely to be made. All composers should be so lucky.