Andrey Boreyko

Andrey Boreyko

Valentin Silvestrov, Symphony No. 6

(ECM)

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Symphony No. 6 is the apotheosis of composer Valentin Silvestrov’s musical style, said Bradley Bambarger in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. Written between 1994 and 1995, the piece echoes themes from the Ukrainian composer’s earlier work but sharpens his sound to create “roiling reverberations” and swelling, hypnotic waves with “climaxes like a deep bell shaking the earth.” Silvestrov, who recently turned 70, still constantly reinvents his musical style, said Matthew Rye in the London Daily Telegraph. He dwells on time and memory here: Slow strides hypnotize like an “intense meditation,” while the shorter, tighter sections “take on a more metaphysical cast.” Silvestrov’s approach to structure can make him difficult to characterize. But it’s important to remember that he practices a symphonic tradition abandoned by most contemporaries, said Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle. His “dense orchestral and somber thematic workings move with deliberate slowness.” The SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra’s performances of Symphony No. 6 enliven the “spirit of Shostakovich” and even Mahler—the composition revolves around a devout rendition of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Silvestrov’s composition is “old-fashioned essay in orchestral abstraction,” emboldened with a “canny command of color and melody.”