Born in 1937, Valentin Silvestrov is a giant of contemporary music, now living in Berlin having fled his native Ukraine following the Russian invasion. His musical language is approachable, heartfelt, and deeply emotional, as you can hear in these two collections of songs setting poetry by Pushkin, Lermontov, Yesenin, and Mandelstam, plus Ukrainian lyrics by Taras Shevchenko, and Russian translations of Keats and Shelley. Grimaud has long loved these songs and has finally found the ideal voice with which to perform them: the beautiful, dark baritone of the Romanian German Konstantin Krimmel. Together they make the perfect duo, with expressiveness right at the heart of their performances.