Fanfare 3
*****
An unusual combination of a raucous 1940’s symphony and a more contemplative 2002 string work

PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 6. SILVESTROV Quiet Music  Dmitry Matvienko, cond; Aarhus SO  OUR RECORDINGS 8.226936 (50:51) Reviewed from a WAV download: https://we.tl/t-QUFzAwn6Fq
“At first glance,” writes Christina Blangstrup Dahl in the liner notes to this release, “the choice of composers for this recording seems like an odd match; one cultivated a harsh, expressive musical language, while the other was [sic—Silvestrov is still alive] a proponent of introspective soundscapes. One piece ends in an explosion, while the other offers us meditative contemplation.” Though both composers were born in Ukraine—Prokofiev in 1891 on a rural estate in a village now called Sontsivka, and Silvestrov in 1937 in Kyiv—because of the historical eras in which they entered the world, their nationalities were seen quite differently.
Prokofiev’s Wikipedia page lists him as a “Russian composer,” partly because throughout his life Ukraine was solidly ensconced within first the Czarist empire and then the Soviet Union. Though Silvestrov was born and pursued most of his career in the Soviet era, he lived to see the Soviet Union dissolve in 1991 and finally fled Ukraine for Berlin after the Russian invasion in 2022. (I’ve written enough reviews of composers who fled from Germany to escape the Nazi tyranny of 1933-1945 that it still seems ironic that anyone would flee to Germany in search of artistic, political, or personal freedom.) Ironically, conductor Dmitry Matvienko is a native of Belarus, a key Russian ally in its war against Ukraine.
The personal lives of the two composers also offer some striking contrasts. Prokofiev fled Russia following the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 and didn’t return until 1932. He premiered the Sixth Symphony heard here in 1947, just after Russia had been on the winning side in World War II and just before the political and cultural climate for Russian artists in all media, including music, took a dramatic turn for the worse. Prokofiev said of the work, “Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds that cannot be healed. One has lost those dear to him, another has lost his health. These must not be forgotten.”
The Prokofiev Sixth—to which he gave the opus number 111, according to some reports because he particularly admired Beethoven’s 32nd and last piano sonata, also its composer’s Opus 111—had its first performance October 11, 1947, with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic (now the St. Petersburg Philharmonic). It got good reviews, but that changed a year later when USSR Central Committee Secretary Andrei Zhdanov launched a broad-scale attack on artists in all media, going after writers in 1946 and composers in 1948. Among the people Zhdanov denounced as “formalists”—artists who created for art’s own sake rather than in service to the state and its ruling ideology—were Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and Miaskovsky.
As for Silvestrov, he too faced politically motivated opposition from the commissars of his day. But rather than wait to be condemned as Prokofiev had been, he stepped back more or less voluntarily after 1974, when he had walked out of a Composers’ Union meeting to protest the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Silvestrov also drew back from his earlier avant-garde musical style and started to pursue a softer, quieter approach. According to conductor Matvienko, the change began with his 1972 work Meditation for Cello and Chamber Orchestra.
The two works here certainly offer a dramatic contrast, especially the way Matvienko performs them. As comparison points for the Prokofiev Sixth, I referenced both a 1961 recording by the forces that premiered it, Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, and a 2013 release on BIS by Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic. Matvienko’s total timing for the symphony is 40:53, compared with Mravinsky’s 40:04 and Litton’s 42:34. While the outer movements of this three-movement symphony time out within seconds of each other, the slow movement in the middle is two minutes slower in Litton’s (15:58) than in either Mravinsky’s (13:34) or Matvienko’s (14:17).
While Mravinsky emphasizes the work’s lush string parts, Matvienko’s interpretation is much louder and spikier. The percussive interjections, including an occasional obbligato part for piano, are mixed much louder here than on either Mravinsky’s or Litton’s recordings. Ironically, though the movement’s tempo marking is Largo, Litton is the only conductor of the three who actually makes it sound like one. It’s possible either Mravinsky himself or Melodiya’s engineers were deliberately trying to tone down the work’s explosions, which probably remained politically chancy even during the Khrushchev “thaw,” while Litton seemed to be doing that as an artistic and interpretive choice.
More than either of the other conductors I heard in the piece, Matvienko seems to revel in the score’s outbursts, including a finale he compares to the shock of the U.S. atomic bomb attacks against Japan in August 1945. The liner notes quote him as saying that “the two catastrophic explosions in the very finale of the symphony and the howls of the entire orchestra [are] like the reaction to an atomic explosion. Here Prokofiev acts as an oracle, or Nostradamus, and says, ‘People, be warned. The main catastrophe is yet to come. Don’t let evil triumph.’”
As for the Silvestrov, Matvienko quoted the composer as saying, “I am so tired of the noises of this world.” Then he agreed, adding, “I understand that, and feel it very deeply. More and more often I walk at night and listen to his music: not in headphones, but inside. And it gives me peace. I want this piece to be therapy and solace for our listeners as well.”
It’s a measure of how strong the Bergen Philharmonic is and how well it responds to Matvienko even though he’s been the music director for only two years, that he’s equally effective in both works. Matvienko is similarly attuned to the spiky dissonances of the Prokofiev and the cool but ardent lyricism of the Silvestrov. While Litton’s recording of the Prokofiev is coupled more normally with the orchestral suites from his opera The Love for Three Oranges and the film Lt. Kijé, Matvienko’s progress from Prokofiev’s modernity to Silvestrov’s neoclassical restraint works surprisingly well, even though at 50:51 it seems a bit short-weighted. Enthusiastically recommended. Mark Gabrish Conlan