VALENTIN SILVESTROV (b.1937): Nostalghia, 2 Pieces, 2 Dialogues with Epilogue, 3 Postludes, 3 Pieces, 2 Pieces, 3 Waltzes, Sonata No. 1, The Messenger.
Catalogue Number: 09J082
Label: Hännsler Classic
Reference: CD 98.229
Format: CD
Price: $17.98
Description: With the exception of the sonata of 1972, these pieces are all recent and mostly brief to the point of aphorism. They are also simple - sometimes deceptively so - and of moderate or slow tempo. They make much use of quotation or reference to earlier composers - Chopin especially, but also Schubert, Wagner, Mozart and others. The pieces are all lyrical and mostly very tonal, apart from the three tiny hommages to Schönberg, Berg and Webern. One senses the composer nostalgically revisiting music that has meant much to him throughout his career, not without a touch of sentimentality. The sonata is more typical of Silvestrov's earlier work, with dodecaphony cautiously allied to high-romantic chromaticism; a rather tougher vocabulary than the recent pieces. This is the 1999 revision of the sonata, which broadly speaking has brought it more into line with the composer's recent style. The disc concludes with the composer's elegy for his wife, which enfolds unadorned passages of music in the style of the 18th century in a dreamlike soft-focus setting. Jenny Lin (piano).