Ep. 71. Valentyn Silvestrov Kitsch Music (complete) Anna Shelest, piano
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 07. 2024
- Valentyn Silvestrov (b. 1937)
Kitsch Music (1977)
0:00 I. Allegro vivace (bright and translucent, free, trembling but tranquil)
3:02 II. Moderato (bright and translucent, flowing)
6:58 III. Allegretto (free, very soft and translucent, distant (extremely soft))
10:16 IV. Moderato (free, bright and translucent, introspective)
13:23 V. Allegretto (soft, bright and translucent with circumspection)
Anna Shelest, piano
Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt have both called the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov "one of the greatest composers of our time”. He is also one of its true originals; though a leading figure in the former Soviet Union’s avant-garde in the 1960s, he subsequently came to realise that "the most important lesson of the avant-garde was to be free of all preconceived ideas - particularly those of the avant-garde."
www.ecmrecords.com/artists/14...
~SCORE~
en.schott-music.com/shop/klav...
~LISTEN~
open.spotify.com/playlist/4hX...
/ ukrainian-rhapsody
~SUPPORT UKRAINE~
razomforukraine.org
The following program notes are by Peter Schmelz from Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, New York City, 2020
In his manuscript for KITSCH MUSIC (1977) , VALENTYN SYLVESTROV provided instructions for the performer. Listeners may find them instructive as well:
Play very quietly (pp) and extremely quietly (ppp) as if from a
distance. Separate the melody very carefully, play it as close to
the accompaniment as possible!!
Play very tenderly, with an intimate tone, as if carefully touching
with the music the memory of the listener, so that the music
sounds inside the consciousness, as if the memory of the
listener itself is singing this music.
The composer intends the name 'kitsch' (weak, rejected. abortive) in an elegiac and not an ironic sense". As these evocative descriptions suggest, Kitsch Music, perhaps Sylvestrov's most played composition, is also one of his most misunderstood. The paradoxes and contradictions of this deceptively simple, seductively ambiguous score get at the heart of his kitsch aesthetic, an aesthetic of memory, memorialization, tradition, and revolution. Most significantly, Sylvestrov's kitsch is not to be understood as a joke or played, for example, as a Norwegian pianist once did, at a hair salon in an urban mall. A cathedral would be a better venue. For Silvestrov's aesthetic, which loosely evokes Brahms, Chopin, or Schumann, cultivates reverberant echoes. The composition is more specifically indebted to Silvestrov's slightly younger contemporary Myroslav Skoryk (b. 1938); the second movement of Kitsch Music borrows from the fourth movement ("Aria") of Skoryk's Fifth Partita for piano, In Modo Retro" (1975). Most recently, Sylvestrov has also revealed a very specific dedicatee, and a tragic foundation, for the composition. Not only an elegy for past musical practices, Sylvestrov responded to the death of a friend, Pyotr Solovkin, a very subtle composer who was very close to me.' and who committed suicide shortly before Sylvestrov wrote Kitsch Music. Sylvestrov said: Solovkin was an "unbelievably intelligent man, who was younger than me by ten years. And I remember feeling strange ... That situation didn't demand any clusters or anything avant-garde. It demanded only something very gentle. Thus kitsch-Music is for me a tragic composition. I arose from being stunned by this situation.……I never said anything about
this. It is not a composition in memory of Solovkin. But in a purely biographical sense that happened, and this composition was the result. At the time I simply couldn’t do anything differently.*
#Silvestrov #KitschMusic #PlayUkrainianMusic #standwithukraine #supportukraine - Hudba
0:00 I. Allegro vivace (bright and translucent, free, trembling but tranquil)
3:02 II. Moderato (bright and translucent, flowing)
6:58 III. Allegretto (free, very soft and translucent, distant (extremely soft))
10:16 IV. Moderato (free, bright and translucent, introspective)
13:23 V. Allegretto (soft, bright and translucent with circumspection)
As a big fan of V. Silvestrov, this is the best rendition I ever heard for Kitsch Music. Also realizing this piece really well matches with the sound of Bechstein piano.
thank you very much. This particular Bechstein is one of the most expressive pianos I've ever played, I thought it would suite Silvestrov beautifully!
Excellent Music, excellent piano playing, the best, I heard for years
thank you kindly!
@@ShelestatthePiano You are such an extraordinay piano player, I love your style
@@jurgendewaal7251 thank you, appreciate your kind words!
Today i listened to for the first time the name and music of this composer ...First thing this piano is wonderful ! what a sound ! Second this music has something strange.. as if it came from very far, perhaps from inside of the soul and third, dulcis in fundo, this rendition is very great..so introspective... beautiful, really ❤
thank you for your kind comment and sensitive observations about the music. Silvestrov actually writes something similar in his directions to the performer- "Play very tenderly, with an intimate tone, as if carefully touching with the music the memory of the listener, so that the music sounds inside the consciousness, as if the memory of the listener itself is singing this music."
What an incredibly introspective performance of these wonderful pieces. I had goosebumps for the entire duration of your performance. I myself play the 15 Bagatelles opus 1 to 5, published by Scott and have been mesmerized by the simplicity - but utter interpretive difficulty - of
Silvestrov’s scores for two years now. I noticed you have the link to purchase this new opus for me. I hope that I will be able to purchase a downloadable version as for the Bagatelles and begin working this afternoon.
A thousand thanks for sharing music of your homeland in such a convincing performance.
thank you so much! His music is a medicine for the soul. I shared the link of the score I play from.
@@ShelestatthePiano Yes, I ordered the volume from Schott Music and should have it soon.