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Sunday, September 5, 2021

Alfred Schnittke - Choir Concerto (Valery Polyansky)


Information

Composer: Alfred Schnittke
  1. Choir Concerto: I. 'O pavelitel' sushcheva fsevo ('O Master of all living')
  2. Choir Concerto: II. 'Sabran' je pesen sikh, gde kazhdyj stikh' ('I, an expert in human passions')
  3. Choir Concerto: III. 'Fsem tem, kto vniknet fsushchnast'' ('God grant deliverance from sin')
  4. Choir Concerto: IV. 'Sej trud, shto nachinal ja supavan' jem' ('Complete this work')

Russian State Symphonic Cappella
Valery Polyansky, conductor

Date: 1994
Label: Chandos

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Review

Schnittke's Choir Concerto—this ''book of mournful songs'', as the text describes itself—makes great demands on its performers. Listeners also have a fairly tough time, since the texture is so persistently weighty. The music is undeniably imposing, but risks monotony through its sheer consistency.

The first recording of the work, which was composed in 1984-5, was issued in 1992, also on Chandos. The Danish National Radio Choir coupled the piece with more a cappella Schnittke, Minnesang, and it is more than a little odd that Chandos now issue a full-price disc of the Choir Concerto alone.

True, the Russian State Symphonic Cappella, under Valery Polyansky, gave the Choir Concerto's first performance, and it is dedicated to them. Their reading has a particular confidence and authority, and they also bring a special richness of sound and warmth of expression which may be the result of being more at ease with a Russian text than their Danish rivals. This is a more overtly romantic reading than the earlier recording, and by no means inappropriately so, since even if the texts are essentially religious they reveal an abundance of human tensions and emotions. There is nothing slapdash about the Russian choir's romanticism, and the resonant recording never threatens to obscure the textural precision of this superbly sustained performance.

I retain the doubts about the work which I expressed in my earlier review, and am not convinced that this new recording is so much better than its rival as to justify paying full price for less music. It is an impressive achievement, even so.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone

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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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Valery Polyansky (born 19 April, 1949 in Moscow) is a Russian orchestral and choral conductor. Polyansky studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Boris Kulikov and Odisei Dimtriadi. Since 1992 he has been a chief  conductor and artistic director of the State Symphony Capella of Russia which consists of a symphonic orchestra and a choir, numbering more than 200 artists. Polyansky is recognized today as a leading interpreter of the works of Sergei Rachmaninov and a number of other neglected Russian composers such as Alfred Schnittke, Sergei Taneyev and Nikolai Miaskovsky.

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