Alfred Schnittke - Concerto Grosso No. 2; Cello Concertos (Alexander Ivashkin)

Information

Composer: Alfred Schnittke

CD1:

• (01-04) Cello Concerto No. 1
• (05-07) Cello Sonata No. 1
• (08-12) Cello Sonata No. 2

CD2:

• (01-05) Cello Concerto No. 2
• (06-09) Concerto Grosso No. 2

Alexander Ivashkin, cello
Irina Schnittke, piano
Tatiana Grindenko, violin
Russian State Symphony Orchestra
Valery Polyansky, conductor

Date: 1998-2001
Compilation: 2007
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%20241-39

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Review

The definitive document of Alfred Schnittke’s relationship with the cello

Schnittke’s Cello Concerto No 1 was written in the months after his first devastating stroke in 1985 and gives a grim portrayal of the composer’s psychological terror and disorientation, to the point where you start to empathise. Polystylistic jump-cuts, once the result of political repression, flip inwards as mournful intoning slams against
feral, expressionistic orchestral screams. Schnittke lays it on with a trowel, but his
genius for building dialectic tension between competing harmonies raises his argument
above the vanilla juxtapositions of lesser composers. When Schnittke returned home from hospital he had no memory of sketches he’d already made for his concerto – these narrative disjoints are painfully authentic.

The Concerto is one of Schnittke’s most recorded works, but it would be difficult to imagine a more physically committed performance than Alexander Ivashkin’s. The Cello Concerto No 2 was written in 1990 and is less in-your-face. A Viennese waltz that sounds like it’s been reharmonised by Berg briefly wanders into focus, hinting at Schnittke’s earlier compositional techniques. But “borrowed” reference-points are now more distilled, and the work spends 40 minutes amplifying and reinvestigating the implications of its opening moments, as the orchestra sits on the soloist’s attempts to generate more extended gestures.

Chandos has added Schnittke’s two cello sonatas to this reissued pairing of the concertos. No 1 is archetypal Schnittke, with grave slow opening and closing movements interrupted by the black humour of an intervening Scherzo, in this case characterised by dense tone clusters and bizarre pizzicato cello figurations. Impetus is turned on its head – progress gets increasingly staggered to create a kind of anti-momentum, a paradox that Ivashkin exploits keenly. The aphoristic Second Sonata is less imposing, and the “wrong-note” humour of the Concerto grosso No 2 is not the brand of Schnittke that appeals to me, but that’s neither here nor there – here’s the definitive document of Schnittke’s relationship with the cello.

-- Philip Clark, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Nov07/Schnittke_cello_CHAN24139.htm
http://www.classical-music.com/review/alexander-ivashkin-plays-schnittke
https://www.allmusic.com/album/alexander-ivashkin-plays-schnittke-mw0001398236
https://www.amazon.com/Schnittke-Cello-Concertos-Sonatas-Alfred/dp/B000VPNK38

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Alfred Schnittke (November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Soviet and German composer. Schnittke completed his graduate work in composition at the Moscow Conservatory in 1961 and taught there from 1962 to 1972 Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. Later, he created a new style which has been called "polystylism", where he juxtaposed and combined music of various styles past and present. As his health deteriorated, Schnittke's music started to abandon much of the extroversion of his polystylism and retreated into a more withdrawn, bleak style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Schnittke

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Alexander Ivashkin (17 August 1948 – 31 January 2014) was a Russian cellist, writer, academic and conductor. Ivashkin studied at the Gnessin Institute, where his teachers included Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Valery Polyansky. He also played electric cello, viola da gamba, sitar and piano. Ivashkin was the first performer and dedicatee of many contemporary compositions for cello, by such composers as Alfred Schnittke. He was also the curator of Alfred Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths and the editor-in-chief of the Schnittke Collected Works Critical edition. He made commercial recordings for such labels as Chandos, BMG and Naxos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Ivashkin

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