Credits:

Konstantin Krimmel,Helene Grimaud;Silvestrov(1937-)

Description:

Hélène Grimaud first encountered Valentin Silvestrov's "Song of Silence" nearly 20 years ago. I was fascinated by the sincerity and transparency of this music and searched for many years for a partner to play it with. Finally, I met and collaborated with the young baritone prodigy Constantin Krimmel. This recording was made in the summer of 2022 at a concert in the Turbinenhalle in the Berlin suburb of Steinitz, where Grimaud performed in front of Silvestrov, who had fled his war-torn homeland and was living in Berlin, and where the two met for the first time. Composed between 1974 and 1977, Silvestrov's "Songs of Silence" marked an important turning point in his creative life, transforming him from a leader of the Soviet avant-garde to a composer rooted in the traditional materials of melody and harmony. Although the controversy provoked continues to rage even today, Silvestrov stated in an interview that.For me, this is not an abandonment of position, but rather a continuation of the most avant-garde movement. Songs of Silence and Kitsch Music (1977), a collection of pieces for piano, are silence set to music. The poems are sung by poets from the Golden and Silver Ages of Russian literature, Pushkin, Balatinsky, Esenin and Mandelishtam, the Ukrainian poet Shevchenko, and Silvestrov's beloved English poets Keats and Shelley. The voices of these various poets are combined here to create a new cohesion. As Baratinsky says at the beginning of "Song of Silence," there is a "harmony of wondrous power. German-Romanian baritone Constantin Krimmel is the winner of the 2018 Helmut Deutsch International Song Competition. Universal Music/IMS