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Sunday, November 17, 2019

Alfred Schnittke - Sketches (Andrey Chistiakov)


Information

Composer: Alfred Schnittke
  • Sketches (Esquisses), ballet

Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra
Andrey Chistiakov, conductor

Date: 1996/2011
Label: Brilliant Classics
https://www.brilliantclassics.com/articles/s/schnittke-sketches/

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Review

This sequence of sardonic and acidulous sketches dates from the late 1970s. They were written for the 1985 Bolshoi ballet Esquisses. The choreographer was Andrei Petrov . The music is intended to complement music Schnittke wrote in 1978 for a theatrical production of Gogol’s The Inspector’s Tale (after Dead Souls). This latter music ultimately emerged, with Gennadi Rozhdestvensky’s intervention, as The Gogol Suite.

The 22 items are each pretty short. They’re really satirical little vignettes where wit is in solution with corrosion. The music is sometimes raucous in the manner of Ibert and Satie. At other times there are tasty little knockabout visits by Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Beethoven (Symphony No. 5 – Fate motif), Tchaikovsky (Swan Lake), Mozart and Chopin (Pas de deux – tr. 15) references are dropped and capitalised upon along the way. The harpsichord is a frequent visitor but in a slightly less intense fashion than we may be accustomed to from the use made of the instrument in Shchedrin and Weinberg. French cinema music of the 1950s and 1960s is also evoked. Schnittke wrote more than his fair share of film scores as we know from Capriccio (Vol. 1; Vol. 2), Olympia and CPO. There’s an electric guitar (solo and bass), flexatone, piano (prepared with coins between the strings) and other percussion some of it ‘outlandish’. There’s even a Russian speaker in Ferdinand VIII (tr.11). The Barrel Organ (tr. 18) creaks and wheezes charmingly. But this is a work that also makes free with the sinister and grand guignol.

This sequence of short sound-picture is boldly recorded and serves well to tickle the ear and please with fantastic dances that lampoon authority. This is not necessarily a disc only for Schnittke fans.

The notes are by Marina Chistiakova and have been fluently translated by Derek Yeld.

-- Rob BarnettMusicWeb International

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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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7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Hi, thank you for this blog! Could you provide a new link for this record?

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  4. il link non è più attivo. conosco questo balletto, geniale, brillante, graffiante, godibile. piccolo capolavoro post-moderno. quando puoi ricaricare il link, grazie in anticipo.
    S.

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  5. Choose one link, copy and paste it to your browser's address bar, wait a few seconds (you may need to click 'Continue' first), then click 'Skip Ad' (or 'Get link').
    If you are asked to download or install anything, IGNORE, only download from file hosting site (mega.nz).
    If MEGA shows 'Bandwidth Limit Exceeded' message, try to create a free account.

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  6. grazie ! generoso e gentile come sempre. buon week end.
    S.

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