Elene Gvritishvili & Alexey Pudinov - Silvestrov: Silent Songs (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Silent Songs - the fascinating collection of songs by the eminent Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov - enchants with its incomparable atmosphere of silence in a new, impressive interpretation. Elene Gvritishvili and Alexey Pudinov's selection of Silent Songs celebrates the subtle beauty of the music, the contemplative lyricism and the sound of their words. Silvestrov once called his neo-Romantic sounds composed after 1974 "metaphorical music." In turn, he described his cycle of Silent Songs as "silence set to music." With the Silent Songs, he created a musical song collection that invites the listener to experience the magic of music in its quietest and most intense form. The initiator and pianist of this recording Alexey Pudinov found in the young Russian soprano Elene Gvritishvili (who herself has Ukrainian roots) a vocal partner who intones the Russian (and Ukrainian) verses as delicately and beautifully as only a native speaker can. Interpreted for the first time by a female vocalist, not only the voice and the piano are touching in a congenially realized tonal fusion, but also the linguistic melody of the Russian and Ukrainian poetry. Silvestrov himself once said about the creation of his songs: "The sung words themselves become the melody. I read the poems, and out of the verses flowed the melodies that combined with the words." The song collection includes settings of verse by Russian poets Pushkin, Lermontov, Baratynsky, Tyutchev, Yesenin, Mandelstam and Zhukovsky, Ukrainian poetry by Taras Shevchenko and Russian translations of poems by Keats and Shelley. Themes such as transience, memory and the search for inner peace are at the heart of the texts.

Tracklist:
01. Silvestrov: Song Can Tend the Ailing Spirit
02. Silvestrov: O Melancholy Time!
03. Silvestrov: Farewell, O World, O Earth
04. Silvestrov: Winter Journey
05. Silvestrov: The Isle
06. Silvestrov: Something Unspoken, Blue and Tender
07. Silvestrov: Autumn Song
08. Silvestrov: Swamps and Marshes
09. Silvestrov: Winter Evening
10. Silvestrov: When the Yellowing Cornfield Stirs
11. Silvestrov: I Set Out on the Road Alone
12. Silvestrov: Mountain Summits
13. Silvestrov: Elegy. Verses Composed at Night During a Time of Insomnia
14. Silvestrov: Ode. And Schubert in Water, and Mozart in Birdsongs
15. Silvestrov: Postlude. Recollection


Thanks to the Original customer!