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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
PROCESSING GRIEF,
By
This review is from: Valentin Silvestrov: Requiem for Larissa (Audio CD)
A reviewer below asks the question 'Is death like this?' and goes on to call this work a 'terrible' requiem. Respecting this person's opinion, I would gently suggest that Silvestrov had no intention of composing a 'traditional' requiem. In 1992, Silvestrov composed a piece entitled METAMUSIK, a symphony for piano and orchestra. Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, in his notes accompanying the ECM release of METAMUSIK and POSTLUDIUM, says '...the Greek syllable META signalises the crossing of a threshold, the existence of a world beyond...a catharsis that finds peace, not through conflict, but by letting go.'
REQUIEM FOR LARISSA is one of the most astonishing -- and beautiful -- pieces of music I've ever heard. Silvestrov has given voice to the soul-wrenching feelings of grief and loss that washed over him after the sudden death of his wife Larissa -- but as we listen to this amazing work, we can also hear the composer's struggle to process these emotions, to heal, to continue with life. The REQUIEM is indeed dark and black -- but there are many rays of light (not only in the 5th movement cited by the other reviewer). Silvestrov has metamorphosed beyond his grief -- and his work has, and continues to, metamorphose beyond the false boundaries that have been imposed on music and composition. These boundaries exist only as long as we allow them to exist. It is thanks to visionaries like Valentin Silvestrov, Giya Kancheli, Arvo Pärt, Peteris Vasks, Alfred Schnittke, Veljo Tormis and others of their generation that the boundaries which inspired them have begun to crumble. This is a stunning, moving work -- I give it (as well as the aforementioned METAMUSIK / POSTLUDIUM and his incredibly intimate song cycle SILENT SONGS) my highest recommendation.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Silvestrov applies his late style to mourning for his late wife,
This review is from: Valentin Silvestrov: Requiem for Larissa (Audio CD)
The Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov has certainly created for himself a unique soundworld in his late career. Believing that creating anything new is increasingly impossible in today's fast-moving modern art, he sees his own niche to be writing "postludes" for what the Romantic era has left us. In these works, harmonies are lush with much respect for common-practice tonality and modality, the atmosphere is subdued, and there's little movement but instead stasis and a feeling that something has been lost. Silvestrov's personal touch are his Webern-like intervals amongst this sea of tonality, and the "Silvestrov halo" where a single gesture is picked up by other instruments and sustained at low dynamic while the ensemble as a whole returns to stasis. The "Requiem for Larissa" (2000), written in memory of the composer's wife, is one of the composer's largest works of this era.
While Silvestrov's inspiration is the Latin mass for the dead so widely set in the classical tradition, this is no typical requiem. There's a "Requiem eternam" and a "Lacrimosa", but only a few isolated words are selected from the traditional text. There is no "Dies irae", and no wonder, as who wants to think about one's departed loved one being judged? The work is generally symmetrical. The opening and closing portions of the work are typical of Silvestrov's late orchestral music, with that special lush yet grim lake of sound. At one moment in each of these two framing portions, however, we are treated to a beautiful bit where strings playing harmonics dialogue with flutes. The middle section, however, will be for many listeners the emotional heart of the world. Here Silvestrov leaves behind the Latin mass and includes a setting of Taras Shevchenko poem saying goodbye to the world. This is all the more poignant because this poem was part of his "Silent Songs", the cycle that helped him overcome his despair at Soviet official disapproval of his music, and his wife was a companion and inspiration through this and, in fact, his entire career. Unlike some of Silvestrov's unsuccessful pieces, among which I'd place, for example, "Metamusik", I feel there's enough variety in the "Requiem for Larissa" to make it listenable all the way through. However, I do have reservations about Silvestrov's style in general, with so little variation between pieces and the great length of these pieces compared to their musical content. Silvestrov is by no means as vacuous a composer as, say, Einojuhani Rautavaara, but I still worry and so award this disc 3 stars.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Vacuum of Death,
By Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Valentin Silvestrov: Requiem for Larissa (Audio CD)
Valentin Silvestrov is slowly gaining the audience he so justly deserves. The Ukranian composer (born 1937) has suffered form attacks for his compositional style from both his country's historical origin and form critics who claim he has not create a new language, apparently a quality that is necessary to judge him as a significant 20th century composer. But for those who have discovered his particular range of expressivity this recording of his 'Requiem for Larissa' (texts from the Mass, Taras Shevchenko), mixed chorus, orchestra, 1997-99 will satisfy that sense that his work is not only viable, it is also profoundly moving.
The Requiem is not the usual template used by the church, but instead incorporates only those section of the requiem mass that speak to loss and sadness, add the poetry of Shevchenko to speak the rest. A series of slow dark movements - largos, andantes, adagios - are very slowly traversed with an orchestration that allows the timbre of the piano and the synthesizer to be at its base at time and creates clouds of tonal clusters to create the atmosphere of complete and utter loss. His choral writing is very strong with keenly devised separations of the male and female voices while, though massed, seem like single outcries. When he adds the solo voice as in the 4th movement (the Shevchenko poem 'The Dream') he embroiders the solo with choral incantations and wordless music that approaches folksong sounds - perhaps the most personal movement of this great work. This is a work of profound beauty, a farewell to the composer's wife, and to listen to these epic work could not fail but touch the heart of anyone who has lost a loved one. Vladimir Sirenko conducts the National Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Ukraine with a fine sense of architecture and respect for the mystery that lies in the silences Silvestrov has so adeptly placed throughout the work. The recording from ECM is clear of surface and rich in sonority. This is a recording to cherish. Grady Harp, June 10
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