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Valentin Silvestrov is probably the best-known Ukrainian composer, and his Requiem for Larissa, now released on album by BR-KLASSIK, was written in response to the unexpected death in 1996 of his wife, the music and literature scholar Larissa Bondarenko. She had stood by his side from the very beginning of his artistic career. It was in 1999, shortly before the turn of the millennium, that Silvestrov was finally able to complete his Requiem.

He did not set a drama of the Last Judgement to music, as Mozart, Berlioz or Verdi had done before him, but rather wrote a lament - in seemingly endless, world-forlorn repetitions. The composer stepped out of the present and into the past, commenting on his life with Larissa with memories of music that had inspired her, and with profound allusions, retrospections and epilogues of the most personal nature. Silvestrov set the words of the Latin mass for the dead to music, yet he did not compose a mass in the sense of a liturgically close or ecclesiastically compatible piece of music. In his seven-movement requiem, the theological order of the Catholic requiem mass is irrevocably dissolved. As if religious gravity had been suspended, isolated words drift about freely and forlornly. The work begins and ends with "Requiem aeternam". At the end, only the wind rushes out of the synthesiser – and, at the very end, an echo of the wind.

REVIEWS:

Perhaps there’s never been a more apposite time for a Ukrainian Requiem. Composed in 1999, the piece is as deeply personal as it gets, being a response by the composer to the death of his wife, three years earlier. As such, it would be improper to seek to reappopriate the work as some kind of surrogate ‘Requiem for Ukraine’. Yet it’s difficult if not impossible, amid the ongoing violence to which Ukraine pointlessly continues to suffer, to listen to any Ukrainian music, particularly music expressing mourning, without some simultaneous reflection on a wider sense of loss.

The work is a refreshingly unusual take on what has become a bit of a hackneyed, even rather vainglorious concept. Silvestrov’s Requiem sidesteps the usual drama and pseudo-spiritual histrionics, for the most part showing disinterest to the familiar Latin text.

Of course, such a mindset stems from a vast, inconsolable mix of emotions, and signs of this manifest in the following Tuba mirum, where the pent-up tension turns volatile, causing turbulence. The words continue in a semi-disoriented stream, articulating an angry Kyrie not so much directed at a deity as hurled in its face. We soon become aware that, though the music is so tragically entrenched, we’re nonethless progressing through the conventional Latin text at surprising speed: less than halfway through this second section we’ve already heard Requiem aeternam, Kyrie, Dies irae, Tuba mirum, Rex tremendae, Recordare and Lacrimosa, each one reduced to a truncated utterance petering out in ellipsis.

...the subsequent Lacrimosa – how heard in its entirety – is a soft-edged return to reality, but again its language is pained, the solo soprano progressing one phrase at a time. There’s the distinct impression of an attenuated music, physicality hobbled, pulse fibrillated, coagulating into rising choral clusters as the bass sags and drags downward. We’ve moved into another form of stasis, cycling round and round, rising and falling. Again that paradoxical duality of infinity and the infinitesimal: of being locked into a single “day … of weeping”, stretching on forever.

The central movement, ‘Prochai svite, prochai zemle’ (Goodbye, o world, o earth, farewell), setting words by renowned Ukraininan poet Taras Shevchenko, both sits outside this traumatised immobility and also serves as another instance of imaginary escape from reality. Its blend of folksong- and chant-like melodic writing sounds dream-like, but is again articulated one phrase at a time, evidently still as pained and doom-laden as everything that preceded it, and its closing moments are an ominous indication that we are in precisely the same place as we were before.

The remainder of Requiem für Larissa, its final three movements, reinforce the same all-pervading stasis of grief. The Agnus Dei offers illusory evocations of Mozart that, drifting and drenched in reverb, sound even more hauntological than that glimpse of a memory in the Lacrimosa.

We’re back in darkness, and the final two sections fixate, again elliptically, on the Requiem aeternam text. The work’s conclusion, in keeping with its immobility, presents music heard previously: that radiant memory from the Lacrimosa, as lovely as it is heartbreaking, slowly evaporating, via timpani rolls and lone string phrases, into a blackness without end.

Performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra with the Bavarian Radio Choir, conducted by Andres Mustonen, this is a live recording from June 2011. It’s good that it’s not a studio recording, polished and honed; don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolutely superb performance, but a work like Requiem für Larissa benefits immensely from the vibrancy and tension that permeate the live experience. It’s not the first recording of the work, and i’m sure more recordings will come, but everything about this sounds definitive.

-- 5 Against 4

A remarkable piece, [here] handled with great delicacy and control.

-- Choir & Organ

The composition of the Requiem was a necessity for Silvestrov to come to terms with the unexplained death of his wife Larissa. That is why his work became a lament and not a drama of the Last Day. The endless, world-forlorn repetitions may be heard as a commentary on their life together, peppered with reminiscences, retrospectives and personal epilogues. Meanwhile, one may hear the work of this Ukrainian composer more generally also against the background of the war of Putin and the Russian army against the brother country with connotations of senseless murder.

For a good half century Silvestrov has had an independent style, which he himself calls meta-music and which one might locate close to Western neo-romanticism or post-modernism. The sweeping gestures still show mourning and the time of processing loss rather than reconsideration. The five-part chorus, rounded out with a basso profundo in the low register, and the soloists who come from it, make this mood, which lets nothing but dejection be heard, impressively clear.

In this recording of a concert that took place back in 2011, the orchestra finds more of an underlining role, where accents are also added. In some sections, including those in which a synthesizer is added, natural sounds such as wind, are also imitated, as well as the old, ideal world with Mozart sounds. Andres Mustonen keeps all participants in contact with the necessary freedom with good coordination in such a way that a very dense and impressive music becomes audible, which nevertheless does not let despair arise despite all the pain. The recording, produced by the Bayerischer Rundfunk technical department, together with the informative booklet, therefore offers a high-quality rounding off.

-- Pizzicato