In the early 1970s, some years before Estonia’s Arvo Pärt turned his back on the sound-world of the Western avant-garde, Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov had taken a similar step.
The piano music on this new CD – three numbered sonatas, the Classical Sonata, the first book of Children's Music and Nostalghia – was completed between 1972 and 2001.
It is haunted by the past, which, for Silvestrov, is a strange place, infused with nostalgia and coming down with ghostly echoes.
The music that reaches the ear seems to have floated through a time machine that blurs and distorts everything it transmits – the sustaining pedal is central to the sound-world.
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Simon Smith is well tuned in to the music’s ambience.
