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In the mid-1990s, the five major record companies were still churning out CDs as fast as they could, and in just a couple years, two different recordings of the same symphony arrived that captured my ear. It was Valentin Silvestrov’s 1982 Symphony No. 5.

Acclaimed in Europe and in the former Soviet republics, the prolific 77-year-old Ukrainian composer is one of the most profound voices in contemporary music. Much like his peer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), Silvestrov hopped off the train of atonality and modernism to develop his own voice: "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.” He has written a number of works he calls “postludes,” because to him, all the musical ground has already been trod and he can only recapitulate.

His music is calm and meditative, and he has followed the path of Arvo Part, finding his niche late in life writing chorale music. His music is very much based upon suspending time, but it is not static sonic wallpaper (like too many works these days). Silvestrov spins out scraps of melody that bore into your central nervous system.

In the liner notes for “Requiem for Larissa,” Paul Griffiths writes, “Time in Valentin Silvestrov’s music is a black lake. The water barely moves; the past refuses to slide away; and the slow, irregular stirrings of an oar remain in place. Nothing is lost here. A melody, which will rarely extend through more than five or six notes, will have each of those notes sounding on, sustained by other voices or instruments, creating a lasting aura.”

I offer some samples of his mesmerizing aura of music, starting with the song “Letzte liebe” (“Last love”), one of 11 stunning “quiet songs” from the 1989 recording of this cycle, entitled “Lliederzyklus Stufen.:

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Ten years later, this set of “Stufen,” Silvestrov has retained this focus in the calm (always calm) drama of the song “What Are You For, Days?” The question clearly goes unanswered …

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Silvestrov has been immensely prolific, in orchestral, chamber and choral music. Recently, Silvestrov has faded farther back in his postludes, basing choral works on tradition Eastern Orthodox liturgical voicings, such as this ethereal section for a 2006 recording of his cantatas that blends old ideas and new ones.

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All of which brings us to his masterpiece, his Fifth Symphony. This is one of just two recordings of it still in the catalog, a fine 2010 set by Jukka-Pekka Saraste leading the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

The Fifth is one long arc, a drama that opens as if an ending, surveying the smoking rubble of a ruined landscape, ominous and uneasy. But this very lyrical composer weaves in melodic motifs (at times these powerful scraps seem Wagnerian) rising from growling sonic tectonic plates.

The first such lyricism starts in a violin around 2:30, and the massed strings present the gorgeous central motif at 4:00, pushing back against the dread. A new theme rises at 10:30 slowly (yes, it’s all slow) in horns while the winds and harp glitter above.

This is music of great depth, of shimmering layers of sound. The dark horn motif returns in the center of the symphony, presenting something of a crisis, before the calm returns. As a symphony, it lacks what we usually think of as development, and the motifs reoccur more as memories than as narrative, but his mastery of orchestral voicings cannot be questioned.

So here it is, a slow, contemplative 40-minute journey through a unique sound world.

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Had you been aware of Silvestrov? Is this too calm for our ADD world?