Silvestrov: Silent Songs

Hélène Grimaud pays homage to Ukraine’s greatest living composer with an album of songs by Valentin Silvestrov. Joined by the young baritone Konstantin Krimmel, winner of the 2018 International Helmut Deutsch Lied Competition, Grimaud presents the gentle music and quiet nostalgia of some of the most exquisitely beautiful poetry ever written flows through this album. "Silent Songs" blends the voices of classic Russian, Ukrainian and English poets together  o create a “harmony of mysterious power”, as a line from the Baratynsky poem by that opens the album has it. Valentin Silvestrov’s Silent Songs includes contemplative settings of verse by Russian poets Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Baratynsky, Zhukovsky, Yesenin and Mandelstam, Ukrainian lyrics by Taras Shevchenko, and Russian translations of poetry by Keats and Shelley. Grimaud discovered Silvestrov’s Silent Songs almost 20 years ago when she received a recording of the complete song-cycle as a birthday gift. Enchanted by the composer’s music, she soon added a number of his piano pieces to her repertoire and began a long search for the ideal voice to partner in Silent Songs. Her search came to an end when she was introduced to German-Romanian baritone Konstantin Krimmel. “It is music which I find deeply touching in its authenticity and transparency of feelings,” observes Hélène Grimaud. “It is utterly poetic, never pretending to be something else. I am always happy to see how much it resonates with people."

Tracklist:

VALENTIN SILVESTROV (*1937) 
SILENT SONGS

1 Song can heal the ailing spirit

Yevgeni Abramovich Baratynsky

2 There were storms and tempests

Yevgeni Abramovich Baratynsky

3 La Belle Dame sans Merci

John Keats (transl. Wilhelm Veniaminovich Lewick)

4 O melancholy time! Delight for eyes!

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (excerpt from “Autumn”)

5 Farewell, O world, farewell, O earth

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (excerpt from “The Dream”)

6 I will tell you with complete directness

Osip Emil’evich Mandelstam

7 Here’s a health to thee, Mary

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (after a poem by Bryan Waller Procter)

8 Winter Journey

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

9 The Isle

Percy Bysshe Shelley (transl. Aleksandr Solomonovich Rapoport)

10 Autumn Song

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin

11 Swamps and marshes

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin

12 Winter Evening

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

Konstantin Krimmel baritone

Hélène Grimaud piano