Alfred Schnittke - String Quartets (Quatuor Molinari)

Information

Composer: Alfred Schnittke

CD1:

• (01-03) String Quartet No. 3
• (04-06) String Quartet No. 1
• (07-10) String Quartet No. 2

CD2:

• (01-05) String Quartet No. 4
• (06) Canon in Memoriam Igor Stravinsky

Quatuor Molinari
Olga Ranzenhofer, violin
Frédéric Bednarz, violin
Frédéric Lambert, viola
Pierre-Alain Bouvrette, cello

Date: 2011
Label: ATMA

https://www.atmaclassique.com/en/Albums/AlbumInfo.aspx?AlbumID=1428

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Review

French-Canadian ensemble in Schnittke quartet survey

The obvious point of reference here is the Kronos Quartet’s cycle of Schnittke string quartets, released as a complete edition in 1998. But after hearing Quatuor Molinari play the same pieces I don’t think I’ll be going back. In fact, if anyone wants it…

The quartet’s decision to open with Schnittke’s Third Quartet is a puzzle at first, until you realise that everything that happens in the first two quartets reaches an uneasy stylistic resolution in the Third, written in 1983. The piece is rich in quotation: in the first few bars alone bits of Lassus, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Shostakovich’s DSCH motif (the booklet-note mentions that ‘SCH’ had obvious significant for Schnittke: interesting point that I hadn’t noticed) hove into view. Or rather, as played by the Quatuor Molinari, Schnittke’s borrowed material hangs in the middle distance, the quartet’s undemonstrative tone letting the material spill into itself by stealth.

But they can do demonstrative, too. The Beethovenian scherzo keeps tripping headlong into crisis moments where high-velocity lines are on the brink of unravelling. The physical violence of the Molinaris’ attack sorts the men from the boys. And they also deliver the most persuasive account I’ve heard of Schnittke’s problematic First Quartet (1966), which is pretty much a catalogue of then modish Penderecki/Ligeti clusters, glissandos and twangs. The Molinaris’ physicality elevates the work’s slightly vanilla material.

The Second (1980) and Fourth (1989) Quartets both deal with expressions of grief. The Second Quartet stutters forwards like a reliquary of smudged chorales and weeping hymns, with the occasional merry-hell outburst. The Molinaris avoid the Kronos’s tendency to over-dramatise the material, and their account of the Fourth’s persistently fragmenting structure also lets the material do the work. Schnittke embeds ticking time-bombs inside his material: canons undo, microtones scar melodic utterances, rich chromatic joy flips over into white-noise glissandos. But here they go off inside your brain, not in your face.

-- Philip Clark, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2012/Mar12/Schnittke_quartets_ACD22634.htm
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/a/atm22634a.php
https://www.thestrad.com/schnittke-string-quartets-nos14-canon-in-memoriam-igor-stravinsky/4751.article
https://www.allmusic.com/album/alfred-schnittke-quatuors-%C3%A0-cordes-nos-1-4-mw0002185414
https://www.amazon.com/Schnittke-String-Quartets-1-4-Alfred/dp/B005A0FDC0

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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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Founded by violinist Olga Ranzenhofer in 1997, the Molinari Quartet has established itself as one of Canada’s leading string quartets. The Quartet mostly performs works from the 20th and 21st centuries repertoire for string quartet. They have commissioned and premiered several works from Canadian composers. In addition to many Canadian works, the Molinari Quartet’s repertoire includes among others, quartets by Bartók, Berg, Britten, Corigliano, Debussy, Dutilleux, Glass, Gubaidulina, Kancheli, Kurtág, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Martinu, Penderecki, Prokofiev, Ravel, Rihm, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Webern.
http://quatuormolinari.qc.ca

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