Ukrainian composer
Valentin Silvestrov (born 1937) has led an excruciatingly unfortunate professional life, but he has managed to persevere and remain productive. The Soviet establishment assailed his work as corrupted by Western formalism, and just as he was beginning to be acknowledged in the West as a courageous and forward-looking voice of the avant-garde, his work underwent a seismic shift toward simplicity, which alienated his Western defenders. His new aesthetic is most radically embodied in Silent Songs (1973-1977), a cycle of 24 songs for piano and lyric soprano or light baritone that lasts nearly two hours, and which the composer stipulates must be performed without a break, as a single extended song. To further distance himself from the likelihood of performance, much less critical or popular acceptance, all the songs are slow and very, very quiet. What's remarkable about this recording is that it's not the only one that this work has received, so the listener actually has a choice of performances. Alexei Martinov's natural-sounding, unforced baritone allows him to sing the music with the lightness the composer specifies, "to create the illusion of a very soft sigh." He has the control to keep the volume around the level of a whisper, and his pure, straight tone and folk-like ease are perfectly suited to the character of the songs. The only quibble with his performance is the tendency of his voice to occasionally drop out at the bottom of his range. Pianist
Alexei Lubimov shows admirable restraint in sustaining the hushed atmosphere the songs require, and his attention to the composer's extensive use of rubato provides the rhythmic fluidity to keep the austerity of the piano part from sounding rote or mechanical. On ECM's 2004 release, baritone
Sergey Yakovenko's voice is more operatic, and he uses considerably more vibrato than Martinov. While
Yakovenko is more secure throughout his range, his performance sounds more expressive in the traditional anguished Slavic sense and more effortful.
Silvestrov specified that "the performer should affect a subdued expression without psychology," and Martinov's simplicity is more faithful to the composer's intention, and ultimately more affecting.
The songs themselves are astonishingly fresh and expressive, considering their very circumscribed dynamics, tempi, and harmonic language.
Silvestrov demonstrates his mastery in the face of his self-imposed limitations in a variety of ways. His melodies are memorable and effortlessly lyrical. He avoids predictable periodicity in his text setting, which is always fluent and inevitable sounding. He uses mostly conventional triadic harmony, but his progressions are rarely conventional. The songs are, quite simply, beautiful. They call to mind lilies of the valley -- small, not showy, often nearly obscured by the shade, but for those who pay close attention, exquisitely and delicately formed, with a hauntingly sweet fragrance.