Valentin Silvestrov

Symphony No. 4 (1976) in one movement for brass instruments and strings

Symphony No. 5 (1980 - 82) in one movement

Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Sinfonia Lahti)
Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor

BIS-CD-1703

The Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Jukka-Pekka Saraste released their first joint record

The first joint record of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and its artistic advisor, conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste, has been released. The record under the record label BIS (BIS-CD-1703) contains the Symphonies No. 4 and No. 5 by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937), whose Symphony No. 5 is generally considered to be his main work.

Conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste comments the works found in the new cd: ‘I conducted the Fifth Symphony for the first time at a concert of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in January 1992 and the composer was present there. In my opinion the work is exceptionally hypnotic and very special in its eventless use of time, but not being directly minimalist music’, and continues: ‘The work is like a nostalgic dream, which seems to capture the interest of the audience without exception.’ The Fourth Symphony was a new acquaintanceship for Saraste: ‘The nature of this symphony is very much alike the one of the Fifth Symphony, but its ideas are presented in a smaller scale. I think that it’s a strong work and I intend to keep it in my repertoire.’

For the past forty years or so, Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937) has been the leading figure in Ukrainian music, moving from controversial marginal status to a central position and, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, to increasing international recognition. Almost alone among major ex-Soviet composers of his generation, Silvestrov has kept his main base in his native land, where he also studied and developed his highly individual musical language. In his student years from 1958–64 at Kiev Conservatoire, he absorbed the music of Webern, Scriabin and the new Polish school, whose influences he synthesized with a Debussyian refinement of tone-colour, and in the 1970s he increasingly addad the idioms of 19th-century song to his palette. For Silvestrov the Fourth Symphony of 1976 and the Fifth of 1980–82 are examples of symphonies composed, as it were, after the ‘death’ of the symphony. These works are dominated by the idea of cultural memory and by a longing for a beauty that used to be, or might have been, but is certainly no longer within reach.