Fanfare 8

*****

The Prokofiev: bold, brassy, and all stops out. The Silvestrov: respite from the world’s woes

The coupling is apt, for after the Prokofiev, one can use a little quiet time. This new OUR release marks the recording debut of Dmitry Matvienko, the rising young chief conductor of the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra since the 2024/25 season. Dynamic, exciting, engaged, and engaging are hallmarks of his conducting, but sensationalism is not. This is a serious, reflective musician who knows the score and how to communicate his vision of it to the orchestra and through the orchestra to the audience.

Matvienko came to Aarhus after winning a number of prestigious prizes at international competitions for young conductors: First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Malko Competition for Young Conductors, sponsored by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Prior to that, he was awarded both the Critics’ Prize and the “Made in Italy” Prize at the biennial Guido Cantelli International Conducting Competition, for conductors aged 18 to 35.

Before reaching his 35th birthday, Minsk-born Matvienko (b. 1990) had already added to his résumé appearances with a number of the world’s leading orchestras, among them the Oslo and Rotterdam Philharmonics, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the aforementioned Danish Radio SO.

Prokofiev’s penultimate Symphony No. 6, composed in 1947 and premiered by Yevgeny Mravinsky leading the Leningrad Philharmonic in October of that same year, didn’t follow the usual path to masterpiece status. It was well received and popular with audiences and critics alike from the very start. Its popularity, however, was short-lived when it ran afoul of the notorious Zhdanov Doctrine, a “strict cultural policy enforcing ideological conformity in the arts, literature, and sciences which demanded that creative works adhere to Socialist Realism, praising the state while censoring Western-influenced, ‘bourgeois,’ or individualistic expressions.”

The very critics that had just yesterday praised Prokofiev’s Sixth now fell in line to condemn it, lest they, too, be blacklisted by Zhdanov, a pattern we find unnervingly repeating itself in our own politics today.

The truly bizarre thing about Prokofiev’s Sixth falling victim to Zhdanov’s censure in 1948 is that the composer held his Sixth Symphony to be a memorial to the victims of the “Great Patriotic War” (i.e., the Soviet Union’s sacrifice of over 25 million of its people in resistance to the German invasion). What could be more patriotic than that? This is what the Sixth was denounced for?

The Zhdanov Decree remained in effect until the death of Stalin in 1953, whereupon Prokofiev’s Sixth regained a measure of its original popularity, as did any number of other works that had been suppressed. Today, the composer’s Sixth Symphony is regarded by not a few music critics as the crowning achievement among his seven symphonies, and yet when it comes to concert performances and recordings, the Sixth lags behind Nos. 1, 5, and 7. It’s commendable, therefore, that Dmitry Matvienko considered the Sixth an important enough work to choose it for his debut recording. And we are lucky to have his reading of it, for it’s an especially fine one, deeply thought out and deeply felt.

In one of his interviews, Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov is quoted as saying, “I am so tired of the noise of this world.” And thus, in large part, a one-time member of the post-modernist avant-garde turned inward to a style some have described as “hovering on the edge of silence.” “Only melody,” he has said, “makes music eternal.” He is quoted as saying, “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.” Now there’s a contemporary composer I can get on board with. But to what stylistic category do we assign a composer like Silvestrov? Neo-post-modernist? Neo-post-Romantic? Neo-post-medievalist? A recovered, rehabilitated avant-gardist? Take your pick.

I’ve not previously reviewed anything by Silvestrov myself, but I’ve mentioned him in passing once or twice before as being a composer I’ve tended to lump together with Pēteris Vasks (Latvian), Arvo Pärt (Estonian), and Henryk Górecki (Polish), on reflection probably a foolhardy thing to do.

There is actually a prior recording of Silvestrov’s 2002 Quiet Music for string orchestra, but under Silvestrov in the Fanfare Archive it’s given by its German title Stille Musik. Robert Carl reviewed it in conjunction with interviewing the composer in 31:3. Of the piece Carl wrote, “It positively drips with fin de siècle world-weariness. Its three movements are a slow and ever-fading waltz, a melancholy but lilting serenade, and a suitably elegiac finale. I find the piece truly haunting in the beauty of its melodies and the deeply sincere love it expresses.”

One word more than the others stuck out for me in Carl’s review, and those who know my tastes and preferences in music can guess which word it is: “melodies,” one of music’s two primal and prime elements, the other being rhythm. It’s the former that’s so sorely lacking, yet so desperately wanted, among so many of the 20th- and 21st-centuries’ avant-gardist composers, whose works have only cranked up the decibels on what Silvestrov rightly referred to as “the noise of this world.” It’s a wonder we haven’t all gone deaf.

Another word Carl calls on to describe Silvestrov’s Quiet Music is “haunting,” and it is that, but I’d further describe it as music filled with a sense of inconsolable, inexpressible sorrow suffered in a profound solitude from which there is no coming back. And yet, beyond that, if there can be a beyond to such an emotional state, there’s a spellbinding beauty to it that transports you to another time and place, much in the way that the slow movements in Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies do.

The one other piece that came to mind as I listened to the Silvestrov was Strauss’s Metamorphosen. I can absolutely guarantee that if the Strauss is to your liking, you will love Quiet Music. It’s a short piece compared to the Strauss, its three movements adding up to just 10 minutes. But this is something really special and totally gorgeous. If Prokofiev intended his Sixth Symphony to be a memorial to the fallen of the “Great Patriotic War,” Silvestrov’s Quiet Music is the piece he should have written.

As he did with Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, Stokowski made a blistering recording of Prokofiev’s Sixth with the NYPO in 1949. It was cleaned up and spruced up by Andrew Rose for his Pristine label. James North reviewed it 33:6, calling it “a necessary historical issue.” The difference, of course, between Stokowski’s Shostakovich 11th and Prokofiev’s Sixth is that the former, made in 1958, is a “modern” stereo recording, and even with Rose’s proprietary “XR” restoration process, Stokowski’s Prokofiev Sixth is no match for the Shostakovich.

Among more recent versions, I reviewed Sakari Oramo’s Prokofiev Fifth and Sixth with the Finnish RSO on an Ondine release in 36:3, and was generally okay with it, though as I admitted, the composer’s Sixth is not a work I’m especially fond of. As I listen to it in this performance by Matvienko and the Aarhus SO, it becomes clear what Zhdanov found objectionable about it. That’s not a criticism by any means of Matvienko’s reading of the work.

To the contrary, the conductor plays up the very aspects of the piece that earned it a place in Zhdanov’s doghouse. The dissonance level on a scale of 1 to 10 is probably around an 8, and there are grinding, grating passages that depict the violence, brutality, and ugliness of war. There’s celebratory music too, music meant to pay tribute to those who shed their blood and died on the battlefield. That music is equally dissonant, for I’m guessing that Prokofiev wished to express the cognitive dissonance between rejoicing in victory and mourning the dead.

Assuming that’s what Prokofiev wanted, that’s what Matvienko gives him, and us, in good measure. Truth to the score, both in literal observance of the written notes, and in the divining of its meaning, is a good thing. And on both counts, Matvienko makes a very positive and strong impression.

It should be noted that there’s a recording from 1958 of Prokofiev’s Sixth with Evgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, the conductor and orchestra that premiered the work in 1947. I haven’t heard it, but I’m given to understand that it was originally released on Urania, a label I singled out in a past review for inferior sound and questionable production ethics. Is this the same performance that shortly thereafter appeared on the Hunt label, and if so, is it any better than the Urania release?

Long on my shelf has been a Prokofiev Sixth with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in a performance that has “made do” for me in a work I quite honestly can’t muster much enthusiasm for, but in comparing the Ashkenazy to this new version by Matvienko, I can state that the latter is more sharply etched and is bound to appeal to those who like this music played bold, brassy, and all stops out. Matvienko definitely knew what he wanted, and he got it. One feels the exertion of his gravity on the orchestra, and that gravitational pull is what keeps the sections of the orchestra in their orbits. There’s never a question of who’s in charge or control.

The recorded sonics are visceral. If you ever wondered what it would be like to have your head inside the flared bell of a tuba, this should satisfy your curiosity. It’s a good idea, though, before you try it, to make sure your head is well greased, lest you end up on an episode of Untold Stories of the ER.

This is an exceptionally impressive recorded debut for a young conductor leading the orchestra that for now is his. I would buy this album for, if nothing else, Silvestrov’s Quiet Music. Very strongly recommended. Jerry Dubins