Alfred Schnittke - Nagasaki; Symphony No. 0 (Owain Arwel Hughes)

Information

Composer: Alfred Schnittke

• (01) Symphony No. 0
• (05) Nagasaki

Hanneli Rupert, mezzo-soprano

Cape Town Opera Voice of the Nation

Cape Philharmonic Orchestra

Owain Arwel Hughes, conductor

Date: 2007

Label: BIS
https://bis.se/conductors/hughes-owain-arwel-1/schnittke-symphony-no0-nagasaki

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

Early Schnittke proves intriguing

As Symphony No 0s go, Alfred Schnittke’s student piece really isn’t bad. A substantial four-movement work that’s not short on meaty thematic material and flashes of original orchestration, it was premiered in 1957 by the Moscow Conservatory Symphony Orchestra conducted by Algis Zhiuratis. Present in the house were Shostakovich and Kabalevsky – the former presumably smiling at the flattery of imitation.

This isn’t the direct descent of a First Symphony like Bruckner’s Symphony No 0. The road to the polystylistic montage of Schnittke’s First Symphony was a long one, but something special is brewing here among the over-learnt academic padding. Embedded within the Shostakovich-like harmonies in the opening of the first movement, I’m hearing Tchaikovsky in the broody low-register clarinet theme. The movement begins ambiguously, as if we’re abruptly joining a piece that’s already been playing for 20 minutes. In the third movement there’s a striking near-Ivesian moment as an orchestral tutti suddenly breaks to reveal an underlying stratum of strings. This is music “composed of” as much as “composed”. The contrivances of Schnittke’s finale, with its vanilla fanfares and desperate tying together of loose ends, tell of impending deadlines. But no Schnittke fan could help but be intrigued by this early symphonic essay.

Written a year later, his oratorio Nagasaki was a bold attempt at personal expression that, inevitably, landed him in bother with the authorities. It contains some passionately sincere vocal writing, even if the Hammer Horror sounds deployed to depict the atomic bomb dropping suggest a degree of compositional naivety.

-- Philip Clark, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/miscellaneous/schnittke-40/

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/July07/Schnittke_biscd1647.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

***

Owain Arwel Hughes CBE (born 21 March 1942 in Ton Pentre, Rhondda) is a Welsh orchestral conductor. He studied conducting under Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink and Rudolf Kempe. Hughes became well known after a rousing televised performance of William Walton's Belshazzar’s Feast, which won the praise of the composer himself. He later hosted a BBC series, The Much-Loved Music Show. Hughes has made numerous recordings, championing less well-known composers, including recording a complete cycle of the symphonies of the Danish composer Vagn Holmboe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Arwel_Hughes

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!