Valentin Silvestrov, Ukraine’s leading composer, currently lives in exile in Berlin. His life in the late-Soviet period was harsh and included expulsion from the Composers’ Union which led to his withdrawal from participation in public life. This album brings together the two superlative works of Silvestrov’s early maturity. Postludium for Piano and Orchestra is yearning and dissonant, embodying the atmosphere of a lament, but without nostalgia, cast in a style full of ambiguity and allusion. The Symphony for Violin and Orchestra ‘Widmung’ is another melancholy, mystic work, a homage to the human spirit and life-force, but also, through hard-won lyricism, to love, hope and renewal.