MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively AmazonUK AmazonUS


Misterioso
Valentin SILVESTROV (b. 1937)
Post Scriptum (1990) [16:22]
Misterioso (1996) [19:31]*
Arvo PÄRT (b. 1935)
Spiegel im Spiegel (1978/2003) [7:33]
Galina USTVOLSKAYA (b. 1919)
Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano (1949) [16:24]
Sonata for Violin and Piano (1952) [19:39]
Alexei Lubimov (piano)
Alexander Trostiansky (violin)
Kyrill Rybakov (clarinet, piano*)
rec. May 2005, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt
ECM NEW SERIES ECM1959
[79:56]

 

Experience Classicsonline


I’ve mentioned in an earlier review that Silvestrov has been getting some overdue attention recently, with a number of recordings in recent years.  Here we have another Silvestrov release from ECM New Series, which have put out several discs of Silvestrov’s work in the past few years, including a requiem, orchestral music, and his massive Sixth Symphony. Since I’ve included biographical details in that review, I’ll move straight on to the music and the performances.
 

Post Scriptum, which opens the disc, is unmistakably Silvestrov. Even with these chamber works one experiences the same sense of great things looming out of a dense fog.  Or, as in the case with Post Scriptum, a sense of something definite dissolving into that fog.  The piece begins with an innocent and sentimental theme stated in the violin which forms the basis of the evaporating variations that follow it in the first movement.  The tender theme returns in the piano and pauses before the violin escalates.  In flashes, there is something almost Mozartean about some of the writing here, but these are carefully controlled.  Indeed, the liner notes mention that Silvestrov saw Post Scriptum as a “postscript to Mozart and, in a broader sense, to the classical period.” The slow central movement is wonderfully warm and melodic.  Of the Silvestrov works I’ve heard, this is the composer at his most accessible and touching. 

Misterioso was written just after the aforementioned Sixth Symphony and shares its sound, condensed to two instruments.  Here, instead of an orchestra we have the piano providing large chords that boom and fade as the clarinet adds metallic scrapings and exclamations.  There is no sense of a formal development immediately apparent—the work has a strange suspended, motionless feel about it, which, upon listening, is in direct contrast to the amount of effort the clarinettist must expend, with many variances of timbre and wide jumps in pitch, all while under utmost control and often almost exclusively pianissimo. 

Spiegel im Spiegel by Pärt has been rather well-represented with quite a number of recordings that are readily available.  Here, in the arrangement of the work for Clarinet and Piano, the recording aesthetic is as good as you’d expect from ECM, with wonderful clarity, as well as a good sense of the space the piece was performed in.  The piano plays a sweet, repetitive melody as the solo instrument plays simple scales.  The idea behind the piece was, as Pärt mentioned, to “present constantly changing views of a single musical object” and it does just that, with the melody and scalar playing modulating softly throughout. The performance here is touching and devout. 

Two chamber works of Galina Ustvolskaya, who studied composition under Shostakovich in the ’forties, close the disc, beginning with one of her earliest post-graduation pieces, the Trio of 1949.  The opening third of the first movement is devoted to the clarinet and piano, who talk past each other before the violin bursts in energetically.  Interestingly enough, Shostakovich himself quotes a theme played by the clarinet in the third movement in his own String Quartet No. 5 and in his late Michelangelo Suite. At the same time one can hear the influence of Shostakovich in this trio, one can also hear a greater underlying sense of detachment which was to play an important role in Ustvolskaya’s work and in her life.  The scored parts work together, but stand at arm’s length from each other.  An austere and beautiful piece. 

The Sonata of three years later opens with the violin playing a simple two-note motif that is carried through the piece in a sort of wooden lockstep.  Shostakovich is still here, but also Hindemith, though Hindemith is rarely this detachedly chill.  Again the scored parts seem to talk past each other.  By the end, the piano plays its cold counterpoint as the pulse of the piece is rapped out on the body of the violin.  A striking and thought-provoking work. 

As with the other discs I’ve reviewed from ECM New Series, the sound quality and recording ambience is exemplary, Lubimov, Trostiansky, and Rybakov are spot-on in  their performances of these works.

David Blomenberg 

 


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.