Alfred Schnittke's work has won wide acceptance in recent years, particularly since political changes in the former Soviet Union. His early studies in Vienna were followed by formal training at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later taught. His musical language is eclectic, combining a number of styles, contemporary and traditional. Schnittke continued to work after suffering the first of a series of serious strokes in 1985. He died on 3 August 1998 in Hamburg.
Orchestral music by Schnittke includes a number of interesting concertos or works for solo instrument and orchestra. These include concertos for violin, for cello, for oboe and harp, for viola and for piano. A series of Concerti grossi is of significance, with the St. Florian Symphony and In memoriam, for solo viola and orchestra. Schnittke's chamber music includes string quartets and sonatas for violin and for cello and piano, with a Sonata for violin and piano in the Olden Style and a Suite in the Old Style for the same instruments.
In Schnittke's world expressive urge and structural constraint will never unite in total wedded bliss, but in the Fifth Symphony (for short) the thing they produce is certainly bigger than the both of them. I won't rehearse the description I gave in my review of the BIS issue, save to say that it progresses from Stravinskian concerto grosso, through Mantovani-with-a-nervous-breakdown pastiche (based on the teenage Mahler's unfinished Piano Quartet) to full-blown tragic symphony echoing archetypes from Mahler's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. The Concertgebouw, for whose centenary the work was composed, are on superlative form, and Chailly meets every interpretative challenge head-on. I particularly admired his pacing of the finale, which keeps the full force of horror at bay by a series of delaying tactics until a final paroxysm which can soberly be described as blood-curdling.
The quality of the invention places the Fifth Symphony far above the punk-expressionism of some of Schnittke's work (and that of his imitators). In my judgement it stands a real chance of outliving the Zeitgeist within which it was born. The Concerto Grosso No. 3, on the other hand, probably needs historical background knowledge of the kind so expertly and sensitively supplied in Gerard McBurney's insert-note. Here the jumping-off points are Bach (Brandenburg Concertos and Beethoven (Fourth Piano Concerto), and if the superb Concertgebouw performance does not wholly allay my doubts about the musical quality of the piece, this remains a superior coupling to the orchestral study Pianissimo offered by BIS. Both works are as magnificently recorded as they are played. In sum, if a single Schnittke CD is all your collection will run to, I would recommend it be this one. ~ Gramophone 1992
