Valentin Silvestrov
Ukrainian composer and pianist. From 1958 to 1964 he studied composition and counterpoint at Kiev Conservatory under Boris Lyatoshinsky and Lev Revutsky respectively. He then taught at a music studio in Kiev for several years. He has been a freelance composer in Kiev since 1970. Silvestrov is considered one of the leading representatives of the "Kiev avant-garde", which came to public attention around 1960 and was violently criticized by the proponents of the conservative Soviet musical aesthetic. In the 1960s and 1970s his music was hardly played in his hometown. This situation gradually changed with Silvestrov's growing international acclaim. Silvestrov became a visiting composer at the Almeida Music Festival in London (1989), Gidon Kremer's Lockenhaus Festival in Austria (1990), and various festivals in Denmark, Finland, and Holland. Later he was "composer in residence" in Hungary (2007 Pannohalma), Poland (2009 Nostalgia-Festival, Poznan), Austria (2013 Klangspuren, Schwaz), Switzerland (2016 Davos-Festival "Young artists in concert"), the Netherlands (2017 The Hague, Unheard Music Festival) and in Germany (2017 – 2018 Staatskapelle Weimar). During the 1990s, Silvestrov's music was heard throughout Europe as well as in Japan and the United States. In 1998 – 1999, he was a visiting artist of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) in Berlin. In recent decades he has dispensed with the conventional compositional devices of the avant-garde and discovered a style comparable to western "post-modernism". Since 2001, Silvestrov has again been working with small forms and "pure" melodies, composing numerous cycles for various small instrumentations. Since 2005, Silvestrov has again increasingly devoted himself to sacred choral music which, however, is not intended for liturgical use. During the political unrest in the Ukraine Silvestrov fought for his country with 'musical means', composing numerous choral works.