Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra - Silvestrov: Symphony for Violin & Orchestra, "Widmung" - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Album Tracks 1. Wiener Bonbons 2. Andante 3. Themes and Variations 4. Barcarolle 5. Introduction and Allegro 6. Sicilienne 7. Andante 8. Sunday Morning 9. Adagio 10. Waltz of the Flowers 11. Waltz

This third instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two works of astonishing vitality for a composer in his eighties. Both of them have social undercurrents Symphony No. 22 is driven by ecological concerns about the pollution of the world's oceans, and No. 23 takes it's material from folk-melodies of the Ingrians, a vanishing ethnic group on the Finnish-Russian border. The orchestral writing in both pieces is passionate and wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of color and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in it's profligate abundance. Album Tracks 1. Symphony No. 22, in the Ocean 2. Symphony No. 23, in the Ingrian Mode

Valentin Silvestrov was forced to leave his native Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022. His music has a prescient quality that unerringly seems to express the fate of his homeland. The intimate Violin Concerto and the heartfelt, single-span Eighth Symphony are notable for their economy of expression and emphasis on beauty, depth and harmony. This is music that hovers on the edge of silence in an uplifting homage to love and humanity, hope and renewal. Album Tracks 3. Violin Concerto~III. Pastorale Andante - 5. Symphony No. 8~I. Andantino - Adagio [alternating] - più mosso - 10. Symphony No. 8~VI. [Dolce, leggiero]