With "Outcast", the Dutch string quartet Matangi breaks a lance for artistic freedom and musical expression - and now also against a senseless war. The three Soviet Russian composers composed music that ran dangerously counter to the tastes of the regime under which they lived. Shostakovich kept a packed suitcase ready in case he was arrested by the KGB. Schnittke's work was viewed with suspicion and his performances were regularly prevented. In addition to his musical work, the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov is also known for his political commitment.
Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt have both called the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov "one of the greatest composers of our time”. He is also one of its true originals; though a leading figure in the former Soviet Union’s avant-garde in the 1960s, he subsequently came to realise that "the most important lesson of the avant-garde was to be free of all preconceived ideas – particularly those of the avant-garde." Silvestrov was born in Kiev in 1937 and studied the piano at Kiev Evening Music School, then composition, harmony and counterpoint at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His early experimental orientation meant that his work received official criticism in the Soviet Union and, despite prizes and some prominent champions, recognition in his homeland and beyond was hard won. Over time, Silvestrov’s compositional practice evolved into what he would come to call his “metaphorical style” or “meta-music.” The composer wishes his works to be seen as “codas” to musical history because “fewer and fewer texts are possible which… begin at the beginning”. He has declared that “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.”
Valentin Silvestrov is not just the Ukraine’s most prominent composer but also a major voice in the music of our time: a quiet voice, to be sure, and one that some will pigeon-hole at the soft-core end of the New Spirituality. But even a first encounter should suggest the presence of deeper perspectives, and encounters with the full range of his music only serve to confirm that impression. Russian commentators have long since ranged Silvestrov alongside Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Denisov as one of the most important figures that came to maturity in the 1970s. It was then that he produced music such as the two Cantatas – the earlier one for soprano and chamber orchestra, setting words by Tyuchev and Blok, the later one for a cappella choir to verses by Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Chevchenko. Both works blend Webernian angularity with an ecstatic lyricism.
Valentin Silvestrov composed Requiem for Larissa between 1997 and 1999 as a memorial to his wife, musicologist Larissa Bondarenko, who died in 1996. It is a big and unceasingly somber work, scored for chorus and orchestra. Understandably, this Requiem is to a degree reflective, incorporating musical themes drawn from older works that had special meaning to the couple. While Silvestrov's typically glacial tempos are in evidence here, some of the opening half of the piece has an angular spikiness that recalls serial techniques without actively engaging in them. Instrumentally, Requiem for Larissa is dark, atmospheric, and even a little cinematic; the choral parts are sparse and minimally applied. In the fourth-movement Largo, the voices take over and settle down into an ethereal texture that leavens the gloom somewhat, but by this time 25-and-a-half minutes have gone by and some listeners will have already tuned out owing to the toughness of the opening section.Requiem for Larissa is an intensely personal piece performed with respect and care by the Ukrainian National Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under conductor Vladimir Sirenko.