Schnittke: Piano Musik

Editorial Reviews
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That Alfred Schnittke died just months before this CD's release is of course no coincidence: Chandos seeks to represent his output in its most intense, revealing light as a tribute. These piano works aptly delineate several threads in Schnittke's demanding repertoire for the solo piano. The 1960s-era works engage serialism interrogatively, with the Prelude and Fugue (1963) steering 12-note rows in different, opposing directions for traction (a technique that makes the Works for Cello and Piano equally fascinating). The Variations on a Chord (1965) takes its cue from Webern's Piano Variations, Op. 27, playing and replaying tones that recur only in the octaves where they originally surfaced. The variations run from subtle, dreamy ambience to hard-hit toccatas, all of them smelling poignantly of Schnittke's genius for merged styles and end-runs around notions like serialism and pianistic canons. The Improvisation and Fugue (1965), written for the Tchaikovsky International Competition of Pianists (but unperformed until 1975) likewise spins 12-note rows that run canon-like through variations, ending in twists of expanded tones and ringing sustain, as if in wreckage. Heading away from sheer thickness of sound, Schnittke scripted Five Aphorisms (1990) with pithy nodes aplenty, heavily interposing silences among tones. Finally, the Second Piano Sonata has harrowing, long-strung notes that seem to ponder mortality and the limitations Schnittke encountered with his failing health. The Third Sonata interjects extremely slowed pianism with long, silent pauses before turbulent motions turn to pounding energy. Slack solemnity is the Allegro section's main weave, and it smacks of the sadness Schnittke's death has left. --Andrew Bartlett

Tracks:

Fuga - Mark Lubotsky
Klingende Buchstaben - Alexander Ivashkin
Pno Qnt: Moderato
Pno Qnt: In Tempo Di Valse
Pno Qnt: Andante
Pno Qnt: Lento
Pno Qnt: Moderato Pastorale
Stille Musik - Mark Lubotsky/Alexander Ivashkin
Str Trio: Moderato - Mark Lubotsky/Theodore Kuchar/Alexander Ivashkin
Str Trio: Adagio - Mark Lubotsky/Theodore Kuchar/Alexander Ivashkin

Amazon.com

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is not really known for writing simple music, or at least music whose many arguments are rather easy to follow. Yet what we have here are brilliantly conceived (and brilliantly executed) chamber works of astonishing simplicity, works that nonetheless convey Schnittke's characteristic polytonal style with absolute clarity. Best here is the meditative Piano Quintet (of 1976), in which the piano tends to unify the clashing lines of the argumentative strings. The same holds true for the String Trio (of 1985). This work is more laden with satirical moments, as it starts out flirting with the Baroque then becomes more twisted and nightmarish as it unravels. Schnittke's music isn't for everybody, but this disc might stand as an excellent primer for newcomers. Highly recommended. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews:

Not what I was Expecting.......2007-05-27

...mediocre and best and the music was not at all what I thought it would sound like. I would have purchased something else

Mournful works for strings and piano performed by those who knew and loved Schnittke.......2006-09-12

This Naxos disc collects five pieces by the late Russian composer Alfred Schnittke. The first is recently rediscovered youthful work in its world premiere recording, and we then skip over his dabbling in serialism in the 1960s to music from later periods. The performers here are virtuosi, many of whom knew Schittke personally, such as the composer's widow Irina Schnittke on piano, his biographer Alexander Ivashkin on cello, and a dedicatee of several works, Mark Lubotsky, on violin. The pieces were recorded live at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (hence the advertisement in the liner notes for the Townsville City Council) but all sound superb.

"Fuga" for solo violin (1953) appears for the first time here. Written when the composer was only 19 years old, this fugue hints much at the restricted musical life of Stalinist Russia in its ability to channel Bach so directly without interference from 20th century musical developments. A pizzicato passage between two arco portions divides the work cleanly in half. While entertaining enough, the piece seems totally unconnected from the rest of Schnittke's career, and so ultimately comes across as fairly unsubstantial.

Schnittke wrote his great "Piano Quintet" (1976) in memory of his mother, though many believe it to be mourning for Shostakovich as well. Opening with sorrowful pointilistic piano writing, it strikingly transforms into a gentle waltz, which is then intensified in tempo and dynamic until any element of fun in its swinging motions is overcome by tears. There follows a string threnody marked Andante . Schnittke has always had a talent for stunning endings--witness the Cello Concerto or the Concerto Grosso No. 2--and in the efervescent notes of the final "Moderato pastorale" the mourning of the previous four sections is slowly but firmly replaced by acceptance and peace.

The "String Trio", written in the spring of 1985, is one of Schnittke's last overtly polystilistic pieces--his first stroke later in the year changed his style drastically--and it is one of his most profound. Originally commisioned for the Alban Berg's centenary, the piece explores the general theme of earlier Viennese music as seen by a composer in a very different place and time. It is also bound up with Schnittke's brief residence in Vienna in his youth, when the city of so many musical heroes had been ravaged by war. Its musical basis is on the one hand fairly simple, a recurring six-note cadence, but on the other hand this twenty-minute work ranges through all sorts of styles in its repetition of this theme, from elegant classicism to melodramatic romanticism to the Soviet tradition.

"Stille Musik" (1979) is a brief piece for violin and cello that is probably my favourite here, a rich landscape of various sounds that avoid any fixed points but which nonetheless have a clear dramatic arc. Pizzicato and microtones give it some exotic touches. "Klingende Buchstaben" for solo cello (1988) is the latest piece represented here and the only one in his later style. The polystylism and hints at romanticism of his earlier material are gone, and instead we find a new clarity of texture and aggression.

If I rate this disc less than five stars, it's only because I'm partial to Schnitke's orchestral works. After getting used to the expanded timbres of the "Viola Concerto", "Cello Concerto No. 1", and the concerti grossi, these chamber works sound a tad bit lacking. Nonetheless, for fans of the composer who seek a budget introduction to some of the more sombre parts of his oeuvre this is a worthy buy. The strength of the performances and the renowned players make it all the more recommended.

Wonderful.......2005-10-18

Absolutelly beautiful,spiritual and sometimes very moving(especialy Quintet)CD of one of the XX century music giants.Alfred Schnittke is one from the group of former Soviet-Russian composers(others being Arvo Part,Valentin Silvestrov,Sofia Gubaidulina,Gya Kanchely and Edison Denisov) whose music got its true recognition all over the world ,proving that no political system can supress a true and profound Artist.Highly recommended ,together with another wonder - Trio Sonata+Viola Concerto performed by Yuri Bashmet.

Absolutely Amazing.......2004-07-08

After listening to this CD, I'm surprised Schnittke does not have a more famous name in the classical music world. I happened to come upon this item here and bought it because the previous reviewers seemed to like it so much, and I was not disappointed! Some of the pieces get a bit dense at times and seem to slip into meaningless cacophony, but overall these pieces are absolutely beautiful. My favorite, strangely enough, is the fugue for solo violin. How can this have gone unrecorded for so long!?

Highly recommended.

Weeping Russian Music.......2003-01-17

Up until I got this disc, I had little interest in the music of Schnittke, though I had heard him praised to the nines in the pages of Fanfare. I had heard one piece before that had struck me as forbiding and had not explored the composer in any more depth. My loss. This CD, at it's bargain price, induced me to try a little more Schnittke and I'm glad I did. This music is haunting and profound.

The two major works on this disc are the Piano Quintet and the String Trio. Both are sustantial, dark works in a "weep for Russia" kind of style. Schnittke obviously shows influence of Shostakovitch, and through the older Russian, of Mahler, Bruckner, Brahms, Beethoven....you name it. But he also includes techniques pioneered in the 60s in Germany France and Poland. Of the two large pieces, the Quintet is nominally more interesting. The piece is a heartfelt response to the death of the composer's mother. The string writing is dense, with the piano often chiming in on one repeated note, like a bell toll. Several movements contain the ghost of an old waltz, twisted beyond recognition. The language careens between tonal, and violently atonal and even microtonal. However the conclusion of the piece, in unadulterated major, is a true apotheosis. It moved me to tears.

The Trio is also a beautiful and very moving work. Set it a primarily dissonant serial language, windows open up in the work where romantic motives and lush triads ring through for a few seconds. What amazes about Schnittke's style in these works is how beautifully it all holds together. The works never feel like a pastiche. The tonal material is integrated into the overall framework in some mysterious way that I can't quite put my finger on. (Are there motivic connections? Is it something deeper?) As such, it seems more of a piece than much of the work of more quotational composers like Rochberg, fine as he is.

The smaller works on the album are also effective. The duo for Violin and Piano shows Schnittke's mastery of string writing. The sound is so rich and full that you rarely are aware that there are only two instruments, yet, the players never sound taxed beyond their limits. The solo cello work is lovely and the Fugue is a fun piece of juvenilia. On the whole, a terrific program

Tracks:

Cello Concerto (1986): Pesante moderato
Cello Concerto (1986): Largo
Cello Concerto (1986): Allegro vivace
Cello Concerto (1986): Largo
Stille Musik For Violin And Cello (1979): Lento
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano: Largo
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano (1978): Presto
Sonata For Violoncello And Piano (1978): Largo

Customer Reviews:

Best available recording of the cello concerto.......2004-07-11

Im my view, this recording is superior to the Polyansky/Ivashkin version. Kliegel's playing is appropriately intense and emotional, albeit slightly exceeded by Ivashkin's performance.

What for me is unforgiveable in Polyanski's version, however, is the subjugation of the chimes in the finale. They ring through loud and clear in the Naxos recording and increase the profundity of the effect.

The concerto is already recognized as one of the great masterpieces. Put this inexpensive version on your shelf and wait for an even better version, bound to show up before long.

Rather lightweight performances of intense Schnittke.......2003-12-16

This is a reissue of a disc originally released on Marco Polo at the beginning of the 1990s, before the short-lived Schnittke cult had taken off. It features what were then the major cello works by the composer, though the Concerto and Sonata featured here were later to be joined by a second in each genre, and included what was the first Western recording of the Concerto.

The First Cello Concerto was written in 1986, as the composer was recovering from the first in a long series of strokes that was eventually to kill him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is very explicitly Romantic in style, with a rhetoric openly derived from Mahler and Shostakovitch, though with a musical language rather more dissonant than either. A gloomy, sonata-form Moderato opens the work, with long cello monologues broken up by ever-more-vigorous orchestral interjections, and is followed by a Largo slow movement. This begins nearly in silence, but slowly builds until it reaches an impassioned climax that leads straight into an anguished, frantic scherzo that rapidly collapses in its own chaos. Out of the rubble, Schnittke then constructs a slow passacaglia finale where the cello gradually soars ever higher over the orchestra. Kliegel and Markson give a clear, fast and rather lightweight rendition of the work, and to my mind this is a mistake: this is one of the most heart-on-sleeve works in the canon, and really needs the extreme interpretation of a Natalia Gutman or an Alexander Ivashkin to bring out its full intensity.

Stille Musik is a touching elegy for violin and cello, well brought off here, but I am less happy with the performance of the First Cello Sonata. This is a three-movement work, rather in the tradition of Shostakovitch and Prokofiev, with a slow introduction leading to a ferocious scherzo and a long, slow, elegiac finale. Once again, though, I find Kliegel rather lightweight in comparison to the (admittedly quite extraordinary) performance by Ivashkin on Chandos.

Tracks:

Piano Sonata No. 2: I. Moderato
Piano Sonata No. 2: II. Lento
Piano Sonata No. 2: III. Allegro moderato
Piano Sonata No. 3: I. Lento
Piano Sonata No. 3: II. Allegro
Piano Sonata No. 3: III. Lento
Piano Sonata No. 3: IV. Allegro
Piano Music: Variations On A Chord
Five Aphorisms: I. Moderato assai
Five Aphorisms: II. Allegretto
Five Aphorisms: III. Lento
Five Aphorisms: IV. Senza tempo
Five Aphorisms: V. Grave
Prelude And Fugue: Prelude
Prelude And Fugue: Fugue
Four Pieces: 1. Volkstanzmelodie
Four Pieces: 2. In den Bergen
Four Pieces: 3. Kuckuck und Specht
Four Pieces: Melodie
Improvisation And Fugue: Improvisation
Improvisation And Fugue: Fugue

Amazon.com

That Alfred Schnittke died just months before this CD's release is of course no coincidence: Chandos seeks to represent his output in its most intense, revealing light as a tribute. These piano works aptly delineate several threads in Schnittke's demanding repertoire for the solo piano. The 1960s-era works engage serialism interrogatively, with the Prelude and Fugue (1963) steering 12-note rows in different, opposing directions for traction (a technique that makes the Works for Cello and Piano equally fascinating). The Variations on a Chord (1965) takes its cue from Webern's Piano Variations, Op. 27, playing and replaying tones that recur only in the octaves where they originally surfaced. The variations run from subtle, dreamy ambience to hard-hit toccatas, all of them smelling poignantly of Schnittke's genius for merged styles and end-runs around notions like serialism and pianistic canons. The Improvisation and Fugue (1965), written for the Tchaikovsky International Competition of Pianists (but unperformed until 1975) likewise spins 12-note rows that run canon-like through variations, ending in twists of expanded tones and ringing sustain, as if in wreckage. Heading away from sheer thickness of sound, Schnittke scripted Five Aphorisms (1990) with pithy nodes aplenty, heavily interposing silences among tones. Finally, the Second Piano Sonata has harrowing, long-strung notes that seem to ponder mortality and the limitations Schnittke encountered with his failing health. The Third Sonata interjects extremely slowed pianism with long, silent pauses before turbulent motions turn to pounding energy. Slack solemnity is the Allegro section's main weave, and it smacks of the sadness Schnittke's death has left. --Andrew Bartlett

Alfred Schnittke: Chamber Music, Volume 2

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Alfred Schnittke: Chamber Music, Volume 2

Manufacturer: Asv Living Era
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Duets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0000030UD
Release Date: 1994-11-29

Lockenhaus Collection [Philips Digital Classics]

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Lockenhaus Collection [Philips Digital Classics]
Heinz Holliger (oboe) , Gidon Kremer (violin) , Erwin Schulhoff (composer) , Franz Schubert , and Alfred Schnittke
Manufacturer: Polygram Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Duets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Quartets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Quintets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Septets | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

Trios | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music