Helena Silva

This debut full-length from Portuguese violinist/composer Helena Silva is a collection of pieces for violin and electronics that first began its life during a 2023 artist residency in Bali. Notably, Silva has quite a serious classical music background, as she studied at Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has performed with a number of orchestras, but she set out to “deconstruct classical tradition” and explore “more contemporary expression” with Celeste. While I am sure countless young composers share exactly those same ambitions, I cannot think of any who have managed to succeed in that objective quite as beautifully as Silva has with this album. At its best, Celeste elegantly and seamlessly merges the lush cinematic Romanticism of prime William Ryan Fritch and the spacious, intimate simplicity of viola da gamba-era Colleen with sublime results, yet Silva further enhances that wonderful vision with some (presumably Bali-inspired) nods to both field recording and gamelan ensembles.

Notably, Silva mentions that Celeste was “born of doubt and introspection,” as she was conflicted about the nature of her art and whether she would be bold enough to escape the familiar by embracing “risk and transformation.” I mention that solely because she ultimately landed in a very interesting place, as this album does feel very contemporary in its eclectic incorporation of non-classical influences, production techniques, and use of electronics, but a strong case could be made that Silva also looked backwards to an era in which simply weaving a beautiful and poignant melody was considered an acceptable objective for a serious composer. That means there are no byzantine structures, deep concepts, chromatic dissonances, conspicuously complex arrangements, or dazzling feats of technical dexterity to be found at all. Instead, Silva’s quiet virtuosity manifests itself in elegantly uncluttered craftsmanship, sensuously lyrical melodies, and an intuitive genius for dynamic and harmonic flourishes.

To my ears, the finest piece is arguably the slow-burning “Celeste,” but it earns that honor primarily because it is simply longer and more substantial than the handful of equally great other contenders strewn throughout the album. While it is admittedly one of the more lushly “ambient” pieces, it eventually blossoms into an almost swoon-inducing central melodic theme and also features a wonderfully organic and fluid structure in which individual threads slowly unravel to subtly transform their harmonic landscape. Elsewhere, the pleasures of the all-too-brief “Meia Luz” hit very similar heights, as Silva weaves pure magic from an achingly gorgeous sliding string motif enhanced by a host of trilling and fluttering melodic flourishes. 

There are also some more boldly divergent highlights to be found as well. For example, in “Outra Terra,” a gently pulsing violin loop anchors a flickering and impressionistic journey through a psychotropic jungle of distantly reverberating animal noises, while the closing “Figurado” is a deliciously churning nightmare of blown-out gamelan and murky distressed tape howls. “Veu” is yet another unexpectedly dark and distinctly gnarly triumph, as it feels like two viscous, squirming drones are dissonantly rubbing up against one another until a hallucinatory nimbus of harmonics blossoms. 

Impressively, the remaining three pieces also feature their own flashes of inspiration—most notably the widescreen Americana of “Alva,” which feels like the long, slow camera zoom-out at the end of a visually stunning Western. In fact, if Celeste has a fault, it is only that I wish it were a bit longer (it clocks in at under 35 minutes), but the counterpoint to that minor quibble is that I would much rather listen to a masterfully distilled and damn-near unbroken run of hits than just about anything else. Moreover, one of the main reasons that these eight pieces work so beautifully is that everything unnecessary has been carved away to leave only a perfectly distilled essence, so it would follow that Silva would want to do exactly the same with the album as a whole and I certainly do not have any grievances with the flow or sequencing. In short, Celeste is one hell of an impressive, distinctive, and fully formed debut statement.   

Listen here.