CD ECM Records Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No. 6

2007

SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, dirijor Andrey Boreyko

A defining orchestral work by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, one of the most individual voices from the former Soviet Union. His sixth symphony, written in 1994/95, a five-part work stretching over 55 minutes, offers an impressive synthesis of Silvestrov’s personal style which he himself has called “Metamusik”: music beyond music, sounds, often verging on silence, eavesdropping on long-lost reverberations.

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The playing is superb, capturing the most delicate hues and gentlest whispers of the score, and the immaculate recording provides the inky blackness from which the music emerges and into which, at the end, it decays. Like so much Silvestrov, you don’t have to know how or why it works to be deeply affected by it. It feels simple, yet it obviously isn’t; it’s profoundly beautiful, timeless, and unforgettable.
Andrew McGregor, BBC Online

There is something highly captivating about Silvestrov’s reinvention of musical progress that makes me think this symphony could gain something of a following, especially in such a well recorded and infinitely detailed performance as this.
Matthew Rye, Daily Telegraph