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Saturday, February 10, 2018

Alfred Schnittke - Concertos for Piano (Viktoria Postnikova)


Information

Composer: Alfred Schnittke
  1. Concerto for Piano Four Hands & Chamber Orchestra
  2. Concerto for Piano & Strings

Viktoria Postnikova, piano
Irina Schnittke, piano (1)
London Sinfonietta
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor

Date: 1991
Label: APEX (recorded by Erato)


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Review

In the first half-minute or so of the Piano Duet Concerto the soloists intone a quiet oppressive Bartokian theme, rear up in atonal recitative, hurl block chords around, and land on an emphatic B major triad. The extreme contrasts are intentional. Schnittke's plan is to lead them to ''temporary reconciliation'' by the end of the 21-minute single-movement structure, thus exploiting the unusual nature of the medium.

Whether the quality of the musical invention fills out the overall concept in an interesting way is a moot point. I heard the concerto in November 1990 at its British premiere in Huddersfield and thought then that it was one of Schnittke's least successful works. It would be a different matter if everything was as clearly focused as the fiery climax around the 15'00'' mark or as the icy conclusion. But as a rule the combination of crude gestural effect and short-winded musical invention is frustrating and unmemorable, despite a performance of the utmost panache by the wives of the composer and the conductor.

If you have been following the Schnittke boom you will have realized that he often compensates for rough-and-ready craftsmanship by some extraordinary flights of imagination. But in his more recent works there is less quotation and less juggling with styles. An overt spirituality has come to the fore, together with, as Alexander Ivashkin's note observes, a play of symbols linking up directly with late Shostakovich.

The Concerto for piano and strings is characteristic in its reliance on disembodied Alberti figurations (shades of the Shostakovich Viola Sonata), incantatory repeated notes and blank-sounding parallel triads. Listening to it I cannot suppress the suspicion that Schnittke is mining an overworked seam and that shifting the onus towards the musical ideas themselves has tended to show up their inferior quality. The queasy microtonal writing in the strings (from 6'20''), the macabre post-Prokofiev Toccata around 8'30'', and the 'maximalist' thumping from 19'30'' (like a blend of Varese and Henry Cowell) are moderately effective; and Postnikova's playing is supremely authoritative. But this one is for dedicated Schnittkerians only, I fancy.

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/Schnittke-Concerto-Piano-Hands-Strings/dp/B00008W7OT

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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

***

Viktoria Postnikova (born 12 January 1944 in Moscow) is a Russian pianist. She studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eleonora Musaelian and Yakov Flier. Postnikova was an award winner at the 1965 Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Fourth Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Her repertoire is extremely broad, covering works by composers range from Bach and Handel to Shostakovich and Schnittke. She takes part in concerts, recordings and recitals at home and abroad with her conductor husband Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Postnikova has recorded for Decca, Erato, Chandos and Melodiya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktoria_Postnikova

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