• 3 Stücke op. 38a; 2 Serenaden op. 142; 3 Stücke op. 102; 5 Stücke op. 143; 2 Pastorale op. 114; 4 Stücke op. 139; 2 Stücke op. 293; 2 Stücke op. 82; 2 Pastorale op. 316; 3 Stücke op. 136
  +Tomasz Kamieniak: Albumblatt op. 6
  +Tomasz Kamieniak / Valentin Silvestrov: Albumblatt V. S. Ukrainian Version (2021)

• Artists: Tomasz Kamieniak (Klavier), Valentin Silvenstrov (Klavier Track 30)

Piano music of the 21st century by the most important Ukrainian composer of our time, recorded by a Polish pianist who has already won acclaim for his interpretations of Silvestrov's music.

With the album "Melodies of Silence", Tomasz Kamieniak has proven his affinity for the music of Valentyn Silvestrov, as international critics have recognized. "Reference is made to the entire spectrum of piano literature," says Gramophone, "which makes Silvestrov's endeavor as comprehensive as it is extensive. Kamieniak is an insightful guide, and one looks forward to future installments of a project like no other."

This second installment continues to document the prolific creativity Silvestrov has found over the past quarter century, particularly in the field of music for piano and choirs. This focus on the piano, which apparently began as a diversion from large-scale works, has resulted in some 30 hours of music divided into several dozen cycles of short pieces, most of which are barely longer than a few minutes.

Silvesterov then organized these into "meta-cycles", each lasting over an hour and intended to be performed as an unbroken continuity. "Echoes of Harmony" can therefore be seen as a natural extension of "Melodies of Silence". The movements pay tribute to established genres: serenades, pastorals, waltzes and bagatelles. Typically for Silvestrov, the music seems to constantly evoke a lost, Schubertian past, while simultaneously reflecting on the impossibility of recreating it. This approach creates a sense of fleeting time in which the music seems to expand infinitely, floating in space.

These miniatures have no clear end point, allowing the music to linger, dissolve and pause. Silvestrov himself is an accomplished pianist who elicits a great variety of sounds from the piano, and his pieces encourage performers to find a center of stillness both in the music and in themselves, without resorting to the kind of chill-out aesthetic of many contemporary piano composers.

Kamieniak maintains a personal friendship with the composer, and his introduction in the booklet reflects both the nature of these pieces and their shared history.

"Does the composer leave room for interpretation?" he asks. "Will microrubatos, micro-accelerations and micro-dynamics resonate with every listener?

There are many questions, and one of the more pertinent ones is whether a composer as focused on his vision as Silvestrov will ever find satisfaction in interpretations by artists other than himself." In any case, Kameniak has become one of the composer's most insightful interpreters.

Valentin Silvestrov was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1937. He took composition lessons with Boris Lyatoshynsky. In 2022, he fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion in February. He lives in Berlin. Silvesterrov's musical style could be described as postmodern. Using traditional tonal and modal techniques, Silvestrov creates dramatic and emotional textures, qualities that he believes are otherwise sacrificed in much of contemporary music. "I don't write new music. My music is a reaction to and an echo of what already exists," Silvestrov has said.

The album Echoes of Harmony, which contains a collection of piano miniatures from 2005 to 2021, forms a coherent, large-scale musical narrative. Silvestrov's preference for bagatelles is expressed in these works and represents his preferred genre of recent years. Under the broad umbrella of this genre one finds miniatures including serenades, waltzes, elegies, pastorals, tangos, minuets, preludes, postludes, mazurkas, lullabies, musical moments, barcaroles and more. Music of touching simplicity and charm that brings comfort and peace.

This album is the successor to the extremely successful CD "Melodies of Silence" by Valentin Silvestrov and pianist Tomasz Kamieniak.