- Title: “Letters to Anna” Symphony for violin solo
- Instrumentation: for violin solo
- Year: 2008-2011
- Duration: 27’30”
- Commissioner: —
- Premiere: Spring Festival 2011, Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, Den Haag, NL
- First performer: Emmy Storms
- Genre & Subgenre: Chamber music, Violin
- Remarks: Honourable mention in the Gaudeamus competition 2012
- Buy Score: Donemus Publishing
EPIGRAPH
“I felt as if there were invisible threads between us,
I felt as if invisible threads from her hair still twisted themselves around me.
And when she completely disappeared there over the ocean,
then I felt still heart hurt where my heart bled,
because the threads could not be broken.”
From the diary of Edvard Munch
FULL RECORDING
TRAILERS
REVIEWS
"Maxim Shalygins ‘Symphony for violin solo’ is in every respect the very negation of everything composers like Helmut Lachenmann stand for. But that is by no means a reason to reject it, quite the contrary. Let us have a closer look.
[...]. Thus Shalygin extends the traditional array of playing techniques, not so much by resorting to ‘extended techniques’ like Lachenmann in his string quartets, or Sciarrino in his Sei Capricci per violine, who tend to transform the sound of the violin into something totally unexpected. Rather, Shalygin is out at unfolding the sound of the violin in all its congenial sonority. No academic formulas hence, nor avant-garde radicalisms, but rather a self-conceived scale of playing techniques in its own right that, otherwise than Lachenmanns ‘manuals’, never severs the ties with sonority, and thus allows for maintaining a thoroughly tonal language.
[...]. The most striking merit of this ‘untimely’ work, however, is that it is drenched with a spirit that totally lacks in many contemporary Western music: a penchant for the transcendent that only succeeds in convincing when it is expressed by a master who sovereignly commands his medium.
Therein, Shalygin is an heir to composers like Ustvolskaya (or filmmakers like Tarkowski), who, from a broader perspective, are more akin to Bach, the spirit of whose chaconne resounds in Shalygins ‘symphony’, whereas composers like Lachenmann, notwithstanding their often impressive feats, are only heir to a supposed ”continuous negation of the norm’ by the great masters. However that may be, there is no doubt that a great composer is coming here. Let us hope that he will live up to the expectations raised by this marvellous work – and that he will be able to remain true to his nature…."
MOVIE
Work on the film began in 2021. Maxim Shalygin & Christian van der Kooy are doing their best to present it in the near future. Read more and stay tuned!