Ode to a Nightingale
Cantata No. 4
Piano Concertino
Moments of Poetry and Music
Symphony No. 7

I believe conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee nailed it when he wrote: "Silvestrov's music is a long, loving, melancholic farewell to a culture that was for fifty generations a 'given', but which is now eroding before our eyes. What used to be utterly essential to the soul has become now merely a veneer of entertainment, a momentary diversion from more 'pressing' matters. His music contains an elegiac tenderness and a nostalgic loving caress for all that we are in the midst of losing. And paradoxically, Silvestrov's music becomes something which stays with the listener long after its notes die away, perhaps not leaving any firm memory of the details of the music itself, but rather an intensity of feeling and of understanding that remain with and permanently transform the soul." {Booklet Notes}

As was the case when, at the threshold of the 20th century, Gustav Mahler composed his Ninth Symphony expressing a farewell to a way of life and art, the music of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937), with its vaporous, ghosts of their former selves melodic strands which sound like a washed out memory of an era eroded by time, evokes an even greater sense of loss. One of this composer's trademark tactics, is to establish a tenuous harmonic and motivic framework as the foundation of a piece, with here and there outbursts of pure harmonic beauty that can't but suddenly induce goosebumps and elevate your soul. Some will argue that this compositional technique is facile, but as I had pointed out in this review of his Symphonies 4 & 5 on the eclectic ECM label, his music lies at the existential level. It feeds on itself. It comes from nothing and returns to nothing, but in the interim in between, it constantly renews itself and reaches heights of unimaginable beauty. Even in the vocal pieces on this recording featuring soprano Inna Galatenko, some of the harmonic colors and textures, as in the late music of Mahler, feel like taking a bite out of the forbidden fruit. In other words, like a revelatory discovery.

Most of the pieces on this Naxos CD are presented here in their world premiere recordings, including the 2003 Symphony No. 7, which is the backbone of this release. The orchestra and conductor well project the work's spectral nature and sorrowful sense of departure. Its 17 minute single movement is rather short for a symphonic work, but as pointed out by the conductor in the opening paragraph, it leaves a long-lasting impression. The way it quite literally dissolves in the end, like final gasps for air, can't but leave an emotional scar.