Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

[Karl Henning]

For Requiem I have these... Both very good.

 

I have the one which my regrettable editing left standing  . . . and also this one

[Pat B]

Mirror Image, is that your second or third avatar of Schnittke? That's a great photo.

Thread duty, sort of: I have only heard his cadenzas for Beethoven's Violin Concerto (Kremer) -- which I imagine has introduced a lot of people to him. I rather liked them so maybe I'll dig deeper one of these days.

[Mirror Image]

Mirror Image, is that your second or third avatar of Schnittke? That's a great photo.

Thread duty, sort of: I have only heard his cadenzas for Beethoven's Violin Concerto (Kremer) -- which I imagine has introduced a lot of people to him. I rather liked them so maybe I'll dig deeper one of these days.

This is my second avatar of Schnittke. I agree, it's a good photo. If you're looking for some recommendations then don't be shy ask anyone who's been frequenting this thread.

[Pat B]

If you're looking for some recommendations then don't be shy ask anyone who's been frequenting this thread.

Thanks! When the time comes I'll probably read the thread (or at least some of it) and go from there.

[Pat B]

...or I could do neither of the above and just buy whatever is available for a reasonable price at the local second-hand store. So now I have this:


(which, in case the image doesn't work, is the "Moscow Studio Archives" disc of Concerto Grosso 1 and Cello Concerto 1). I listened to part of the CG (different performance) on youtube and this might be right up my alley.

[Mirror Image]

...or I could do neither of the above and just buy whatever is available for a reasonable price at the local second-hand store. So now I have this:


(which, in case the image doesn't work, is the "Moscow Studio Archives" disc of Concerto Grosso 1 and Cello Concerto 1). I listened to part of the CG (different performance) on youtube and this might be right up my alley.

That's a great Concerto Grosso No. 1 performance (the best I can remember). The Cello Concerto No. 1 I prefer over all other performances is Alexander Ivashkin's (w/ Polyansky conducting the Russian State SO) on Chandos. Gutman is a good cellist, but Ivashkin digs deeper IMHO into the work.

[snyprrr]

That's a great Concerto Grosso No. 1 performance (the best I can remember). The Cello Concerto No. 1 I prefer over all other performances is Alexander Ivashkin's (w/ Polyansky conducting the Russian State SO) on Chandos. Gutman is a good cellist, but Ivashkin digs deeper IMHO into the work.

...or I could do neither of the above and just buy whatever is available for a reasonable price at the local second-hand store. So now I have this:


(which, in case the image doesn't work, is the "Moscow Studio Archives" disc of Concerto Grosso 1 and Cello Concerto 1). I listened to part of the CG (different performance) on youtube and this might be right up my alley.

I have Gutman on EMI with Masur (w/Schumann). CC1 is one of Schnittke's most Post-Modern works, no? It's got those turn-on-a-dime chord changes that sound like Expressionist Baroque (Grotesquerie). It's like half way between the Post Mod stuff and the full dreariness of the Late Style. I find CC1 more 'manufactured' sounding than CC2,... CC2 is in the full Late Style,... it has quite a wider palette of colors.

1-5, how would you rate the Viola Concerto, Violin Concertos 3-4, and CC 1-2? I recall not liking the Viola C (was it Tabea Zimmermann?),... or did I get it confused with the Penderecki (THAT one I found dreary!!)??

[Mirror Image]

I have Gutman on EMI with Masur (w/Schumann). CC1 is one of Schnittke's most Post-Modern works, no? It's got those turn-on-a-dime chord changes that sound like Expressionist Baroque (Grotesquerie). It's like half way between the Post Mod stuff and the full dreariness of the Late Style. I find CC1 more 'manufactured' sounding than CC2,... CC2 is in the full Late Style,... it has quite a wider palette of colors.

1-5, how would you rate the Viola Concerto, Violin Concertos 3-4, and CC 1-2? I recall not liking the Viola C (was it Tabea Zimmermann?),... or did I get it confused with the Penderecki (THAT one I found dreary!!)??

I find both Schnittke CCs to be fine and some of his most inspired music (I also highly recommend his Cello Sonatas). The Viola Concerto is no exception. Clearly you haven't heard either of Bashmet's performances or they could very well change your mind. I don't like Penderecki at all, so I could careless about his music. The Violin Concertos No. 3 & 4 are both excellent, but neither are Schnittke at his most inspired with maybe the VC No. 4 giving us something more to chew on. In other words, it leaves a stronger impression in my mind than the 3rd.

[Mirror Image]

If you can find the Rozhdestvensky Faust Cantata, that's the way to go, over the BIS performance (though the latter is more than acceptable). Haven't heard the Boreyko that Jens was very positive about, though.

[asin]B001T6FVLM[/asin]

Definitely a fine performance. Also, a dynamite performance of Concerto Grosso No. 2 with the dedicatees of the work: Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman.

[not edward]

Definitely a fine performance. Also, a dynamite performance of Concerto Grosso No. 2 with the dedicatees of the work: Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman.

No argument there: I'd rate this as unquestionably the Concerto Grosso #2 to get. Krysa and Thedeen can't match it for intensity, while the Chandos with Grindenko and Ivashkin is IMO one of their rare misfires, a performance that's so overdone as to turn into self-parody. It's not one of my favourite Schnittke works, but it wasn't till I'd heard Kagan/Gutman that I realized it wasn't the complete turkey I'd been treating it as.

[snyprrr]

No argument there: I'd rate this as unquestionably the Concerto Grosso #2 to get. Krysa and Thedeen can't match it for intensity, while the Chandos with Grindenko and Ivashkin is IMO one of their rare misfires, a performance that's so overdone as to turn into self-parody. It's not one of my favourite Schnittke works, but it wasn't till I'd heard Kagan/Gutman that I realized it wasn't the complete turkey I'd been treating it as.

Is that the same performance that shows up on another (old) release, with the Cello Concerto? (I think)

[Mirror Image]

No argument there: I'd rate this as unquestionably the Concerto Grosso #2 to get. Krysa and Thedeen can't match it for intensity, while the Chandos with Grindenko and Ivashkin is IMO one of their rare misfires, a performance that's so overdone as to turn into self-parody. It's not one of my favourite Schnittke works, but it wasn't till I'd heard Kagan/Gutman that I realized it wasn't the complete turkey I'd been treating it as.

I definitely agree with you here. I found this performance to completely nail the essence of the work. Kagan and Gutman give it their all. I was quite disappointed with the BIS and Chandos performances in comparison with the Krysa/Thedeen being better than Grindenko/Ivashkin, but they were up against some stiff competition anyway.

[Mirror Image]

Is that the same performance that shows up on another (old) release, with the Cello Concerto? (I think)

I don't recall Concerto Grosso No. 2 showing up on a recording paired with Gutman's Cello Concerto No. 1. Could you perhaps be thinking of the Viola Concerto? I know these were coupled together initially.

[snyprrr]

I don't recall Concerto Grosso No. 2 showing up on a recording paired with Gutman's Cello Concerto No. 1. Could you perhaps be thinking of the Viola Concerto? I know these were coupled together initially.

that's probably right

[Mirror Image]

One of Schnittke's best symphonies: Symphony No. 4 -

It's ironic that the most instinctive metaphors for Alfred Schnittke's Fourth Symphony (1984) are ones of connection. The far greater part of Schnittke's output is a testament to disconnection, to the inevitable atrophy, entropy, and dissolution of any musical material. But the wisdom of paradox tells us that the skeptic often conceals the most fervent believer, and that the best unravelers are, at heart, even greater weavers.

That is the strange logic behind Schnittke's Fourth, perhaps his most tightly knit work. It bears all the metaphors of wholeness: the pledge, the oath, the seal, threads which interlace in a fabric of virtuosic density, single seeds which cross-pollinate and disseminate, and roots that extend deep and wide into separate traditions. Out of the discordant, Schnittke spins an intricate harmonic web.

Analyzing (literally, "loosening up") this web is a real challenge, however. The Fourth Symphony's "surface," on a symbolic level, contains four separate religious traditions: on one hand, three braids of Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant), and on another, their implied precursor, Judaism. Schnittke calls forth each of these disparate strands as a particular musical line, hymn-like and stepwise, each varying from the other two only in subtle degrees of intonation. Schnittke adds to these three discrete modes a fourth "Semitic" mode in semitones, echoing ancient synagogue chant.

With these four musical pillars, Schnittke constructs a three-fold "plot" for the entire Symphony based on the Catholic rosary. The rosary concentrates on the Virgin Mary, recounting the story of Christ's life through her eyes in a series of three expressive states--the Joyful, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious. Each of these states further consists of five episodes: the Joyful thus recounts the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, Jesus's Presentation in the Temple, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple; the Sorrowful presents among other events the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the cross, and the Crucifixion; and likewise, the Glorious relates the Resurrection and so on.

Schnittke's task in this work-both awesomely rigid and seamlessly lyrical--is to musically reconstruct each of these events in an unbroken, single-movement chain. In the process, Schnittke relies upon a Baroque-like continuo of piano, harpsichord, and celesta, again reflecting the rosary's triple-structure and the three Christian denominations. These keyboards form the Symphony's spine, following each other in a relentless, unbreakable canon whose strange dissonances emit a pearly luminescence. And as each keyboard's line moves in one of the "denominational" modes (that is, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Protestant), the three in combination ubiquitously sound the chromatic, "Jewish" fourth mode. The sound-world of this continuo group fill the entire work; as Schnittke himself has said, "The whole work is yoked into this bent space of intonation."

In addition to the keyboards, Schnittke also employs vocal solos at three key structural moments--a tenor roughly one third through the work, a countertenor two-thirds through, and, to end the Symphony, a choral setting of the Ave Maria, synthesizing all previous motives in a single diatonic mode. Schnittke originally had to suppress this text; its religious nature would have disallowed it performance in the Soviet Union (only after Schnittke left Moscow for Hamburg did he notify his publishers of the text).

Yet even after this concealment is made explicit, Schnittke's Fourth still bears the marks of a secret rite; it weaves far too many levels, layers, and patterns into its hazy, melancholic space to be entirely comprehensible. But like Schnittke's other works of spiritual affirmation and connection, few as they are, the Fourth Symphony follows not the logic of clarity, but the conviction of scarred, fervid prayer.

[Taken from All Music Guide]

[Mirror Image]

Yet another Schnittke classic: (K)ein Sommernachtstraum -

"The piece should be played in a concert of Shakespeare settings, though it has no direct connection with Shakespeare. Yet it is not for that reason that it is called (K)ein Sommernachtstraum ("(Not) A Midsummer Night's Dream"). And that is all there is to say about my Mozart-Schubert related rondo"
You have to love a composer who speaks in such a tangled, self-negating way about his music, especially a piece as provocative -- some might say obnoxious -- as (K)ein Sommernachtstraum. Yet Schnittke often writes music as he writes words -- as a series of negations which cancel each other out. Material grows out of combat and reversal, out of the scary holes between material, out of the ambiguous stuff between the lines.

This "ambiguous stuff" in (K)ein Sommernachtstraum comes, as Schnittke said above, from Mozart and Schubert -- but not quite. Schnittke adds: "I should like to add that I did not steal all the 'antiquities' in this piece; I faked them." This fake Viennese Classicism free-floats in the composer's works of the late 1970s and 1980s. Some works carry the fake Mozart-Schubert mark as fatal wound, like the Violin Concerto No. 4 and Concerto for Viola and Orchestra; other works, like Schnittke's famous String Trio, entirely inhabit the Mozart-Schubert complex like a squatter in a burnt out building.

In the case of (K)ein Sommernachtstraum, Schnittke had actually written its main structure out completely the year before, as a Gratulationsrondo ("Congratulatory Rondo") for violin and piano, celebrating violinist and friend Mark Lubotsky's fiftieth birthday. This little chamber work comes off almost perfectly as a sonata-rondo movement from the 1780s, complete with catchy primary and secondary themes, a development, "ideal" modulations, and a complete recapitulation.

Yet not everything sits right: under the surface of this Rondo, Schnittke marks this work as a forgery, with parallel fifths, congested bass lines, odd major-minor shifts, and so on. And it is these signatures of the inauthentic that ferment into the Molotov cocktail of (K)ein Sommernachtstraum. With the help of a huge orchestra, Schnittke here magnifies the cracks in his classical mask; tiny fissures become gaping holes, filled with the most garish and unseemly dissonances, and the most suffocating agglomerations of themes and motives. Solid 18th-century melodies now spin into raunchy, vicious circus marches; solos come from unseen soloists; modulations occur in five keys at once. The whole affair reeks of carnival, and carnival's intent on literally turning the world upside down.

But carnivals are also loads of fun, and Schnittke manages to tread the line between horror and a good time. The atmosphere reminds one of The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- not composer Paul Dukas' work, but Disney's animation of it in Fantasia, where a single broom comes alive, multiplies uncontrollably, and turns from cutesy creature into a sprawling monstrous menace.

Inevitably, things lead to disaster -- you must pay for your fun -- and (K)ein Sommernachtstraum climaxes on a disgusting smear of cluster chords and sleigh bells, after which the opening melody returns, bearing deep trauma. The effect of this piece (its "what") is as clear as a stop sign, and certainly explains to some degree Schnittke's popularity. But understanding the "why" of a piece like this isn't simple; Schnittke has confessed many times to loving the music he parodies, especially that "Mozart-Schubert" sound. Perhaps he rails not against the music itself, but the world that uses it, a world far more harmful than Schnittke's own audacious pastiches.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

[CRCulver]

Yet another Schnittke classic: (K)ein Sommernachtstraum -

This piece pisses me off now, not because it's bad per se, but it's the sort of light and harmless Schnittke work that ensembles program nowadays to avoid alienating their subscriber audiences, while the bulk of Schnittke's output has been consigned to oblivion. It must have been interesting to have been a concertgoer during the Schnittke boom of the late 1980s through the late 1990s, when everything he wrote was on offer.

[Karl Henning]

Strictly speaking, then, it isn't the piece to which you object....

[CRCulver]

Strictly speaking, then, it isn't the piece to which you object....

No, I object to hearing about it, to being excited that a Schnittke piece has finally been programmed in a concert I can go to, and then to find out that it is (K)ein Sommernachtstraum or similar. It's the same frustration that Pettersson fans feel when that composer's Symphony No. 7 is the only work that orchestras ever seem to put  on.

[Mirror Image]

No, I object to hearing about it, to being excited that a Schnittke piece has finally been programmed in a concert I can go to, and then to find out that it is (K)ein Sommernachtstraum or similar. It's the same frustration that Pettersson fans feel when that composer's Symphony No. 7 is the only work that orchestras ever seem to put  on.

I think instead of having a negative outlook you could try to be more positive about this and look at this way: at least someone is programming Schnittke, or Pettersson, in the first place even if it's a 'popular' piece. I still love (K)ein Sommernachtstraum whether it's programmed or not. The music, itself, is what matters to me and not whether a work by Schnittke, or Pettersson, makes onto a concert program.