The vogue for concerto-symphony hybrids of one sort or another has been strong in the former Soviet Union from the 1960s on; its precursor was Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante, more properly translated as Symphony-Concerto, for cello and orchestra. Valentin Silvestrov continues this line into the 1990s, not by introducing symphonic complexity into a concerto or concerto-like virtuosity into a symphony, but by tranquillizing and intermingling both elements. Dedication apparently underuses the phenomenal virtuosity of its dedicatee, Gidon Kremer, but it certainly has a strongly personal expressive flavour.

Like Silvestrov’s masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony, which I reviewed in October (Sony Classical), Dedication explores a strange but beautiful world of timeless drifting. There are unseen evils, so the composer has to proceed with caution, but there are exotic delights too, so he proceeds with wonder; which means that the prevailing tempo has to be slow, both in the vaguely threatening sections and the vaguely consoling ones which alternate with them. Scurrying arpeggiations for the violin, glowering chords and resonance-catching high sustained lines alternate with nostalgic clarinet broken chords and triadic harmonies.

Silvestrov takes a risk by making his opening section the only vaguely fast one. The last of the three movements is the longest and is daringly fashioned as a deliberate non-development of the violin’s various themes, leaving the question of ultimate restfulness or instability unsettled, and the conclusion comes with rumbles, tinklings and gongings uncannily balanced between awareness and oblivion. On a couple of weeks’ acquaintance I cannot feel that he brings off the overall design as surefootedly as he does in his Fifth Symphony, and there are times when the ideas sound uncomfortably close to George Crumb without the special effects (does anyone remember the vogue for Crumb in the 1970s? – quite a few of the Russian avant-garde knew and responded to his evocative meditations). At its best, however, Dedication still manages to create the uncanny effect of having been dictated by a ghostly figure from the past. Something may have been lost in the act of transmission, but the other-worldliness and ethereal calm are strongly sensed.

Post scriptum is intended as an ‘echo’ to Dedication, and it calls up other ghosts, notably Mozart. The style references are more overtly Viennese Classical here, but the sensibility remains personal and contemporary. For me this music evokes the mystery of a city riverside at night and a consciousness at once lonely, enthralled and strangely restful.

In this purgatorial world of quasi-communication Kremer plays with hypnotic intensity, Vadim Sacharov is at one with him in Post scriptum, and in Dedication Roman Kofman confirms his special affinity with Silvestrov – he was the conductor on the famous Melodiya LP of the Fifth Symphony I mentioned in October. If that work has cast its spell on you (and it would always be my recommendation for first contact with Silvestrov) this superbly recorded Teldec disc should make a rewarding follow-up.

David J. Fanning
Gramophone, December 1996

The music of Valentin Silvestrov has received high praise in these pages, the much-acclaimed Sony recording of the Ukrainian composer's Symphony No. 5 in particular, which wound up on more than a few critics' year's-best lists. I was quite taken with Silvestrov's Fifth Symphony also -- music with a quiet, cumulative power, like Russian Romanticism viewed with unsentimental nostalgia through a windswept crystalline landscape.

Dedication, completed in 1991 and inscribed to Gidon Kremer, who gave the work its first performance, inhabits a similarly characteristic musical soundworld. Although written in the traditional three movements, the soloist-versus-orchestra fireworks display of the historical concerto is wholly foreign to Silvestrov's musical sensibility; the subtitle "Symphony for Violin and Orchestra" more accurately conveys the organic, closely integrated, constantly shifting musical form. Massive resonating opening chords for full orchestra and jagged brass phrases give way to melodic fragments by the soloist, with lingering held notes echoed later by the orchestra. Silvestrov's timeless floating textures segue into a warmer Moderato section with a characteristic consolatory rising passages for strings. Longer notes for the soloist rise ever higher, giving hope of light at the end of the tunnel. The second movement opens with high, edgy harmonics and ominous orchestral surges, which give way to one of Silvestrov's most inspired creations, an unabashedly soaring melody for solo violin, which fully validates Gidon Kremer's description of Dedication as "a nostalgic attempt to awaken Romanticism to new life." Gently supported by strings, a more agitated section follows, which leads directly into the third movement.

Here again, hyperactive passagework for the soloist amid menacing timpani rumbles and orchestral surges alternate with evanescent lyrical passages, ultimately leading to a reprise of the memorable theme from the second movement which returns in a broader, more expansive form against the still ominous rumblings of the orchestra (not unlike the Finale of Elgar's First Symphony, though, of course, wholly different in style).

Yet, at twenty-three minutes, the final movement is longer than the first two movements combined, and it is this section that raises some doubts. I'm not sure that narrative tension is successfully sustained over this long span, and I think Silvestrov loses the thread with one repetition too many of his alternating materials. Even with the extended -- too extended for my taste -- Postlude that brings the work full circle to the opening measures, I don't feel a true sense of culmination or resolution, as I do in the Fifth Symphony. A slight trimming of the final movement would make for a tauter, less prolix argument and tighten up a work that in its evanescent, ever-shifting texture needs a firm structural framework if it is not to sound shapeless and meandering, qualities that are not entirely avoided here.

Written concurrently with Dedication, at sixteen minutes, the Violin Sonata Post scriptum certainly has the virtue of brevity. While Kremer believes the work is "like a postscript to Dedication, like its echo," I feel the composer's comment that it is "a postscript to Mozart and, more generally, to Classicism" seems closer to the mark. As in Dedication, lyrical themes alternate with more aggressive sections, though there is a more concentrated purity and a spare simplicity to the melodic phrases in the deftly handled instrumental writing, which lends an aptly valedictory feel to the music. The attractive, songlike melody in the central Andantino is another indelible Silvestrov winner, though the two-note echoing repetition that dominates the very brief concluding Allegro vivace is pretty thin stuff, and, as with Dedication, I don't feel the work is satisfactorily resolved.

Gidon Kremer plays with his usual technical assurance and antiheroic élan, the Russian's edgy, astringent timbre preventing the lyrical moments from settling into a washy John Tesh-like soupiness. Roman Kofman and the Munich orchestra provide wonderfully refined and tightly focused support. I was astonished to read that Dedication was taken from a live performance, so stunningly recorded is the work with clarity, depth, and a firmly focused image, superlatively engineered even by Teldec's elevated standards. Despite the caveats noted above, the Ukrainian composer's melding of angst-ridden unease with nostalgic backward glances at Russian Romanticism is wholly compelling, and there is little doubt that Valentin Silvestrov remains one of the most intriguing and individual compositional voices of our time.

Lawrence A. Johnson
Fanfare, September/October 1997

Over the last 15 years or so, the generation of Russian composers born in the Thirties, such as Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina, have become cult figures in the West. But even amongst that group of visionaries, Silvestrov cuts an extraordinary and eccentric figure. Since the Seventies, he’s made, in Gidon Kremer’s words, ‘a nostalgic attempt to awaken Romanticism to a new life’. But in fact the impression you get from these strange pieces is that Silvestrov invokes phrases from Romantic music in order to put them to sleep. A dreamlike haze seems to cover the music, which moves at an underwater pace.

The concerto, Dedication, traces the same path in each of its three movements, from a slow, meditative and dissonant beginning to a sweetly Romantic conclusion. But so lush is the texture, so guileless those constant rising step-wise figures, that the transition feels painless despite its suddenness. What movement there is tends to come from the soloist, who agitates the calm surface of the music with tiny febrile gestures, or floats above it with a melodic line. Gidon Kremer switches from one role to the other with marvellous ease.

The Post scriptum, described as ‘the beautiful ruin of a sonata’, is even more naive, at one point almost quoting Schubert. Once again, Kremer is a wonderfully eloquent advocate for the music.

Ivan Hewett
BBC Music Magazine