Cheap Schnittke: Piano Concerto/Violin Concerto/Sonata No.3 (Music) (Alfred Schnittke, Ralf Gothoni, Mark Lubotsky, Terhi Aurala, Tom Bildo, Outi Heiskanen, Petra Hinkkanen, Sami Junnonen, Mikko Kauppinen, Timo Kortesmaki) Price

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Customer Reviews of Schnittke: Piano Concerto/Violin Concerto/Sonata No.3

Excellent performances of fine Schnittke concerti
The Concerto for Piano and Strings is generally considered to be one of Alfred Schnittke's finest works. In this disc, a quasi-sequel to Mark Lubotsky and Ralf Gothóni's disc of the first two violin sonatas, it's joined with the third violin sonata and third violin concerto to make an appealing mix of music.

The Piano Concerto, written in 1979, is a dark, intense one-movement work. Knitted together from diverse sources: a parody of the Moonlight sonata, soft string tone clusters, pounding chords, Renaissance-type polyphony, motor rhythms, microtonal string glissandi and, above all, Orthodox church music. Somehow, Schnittke manages to bring these elements together to create an entirely convincing structure that starts out of nothing, builds to several climaxes and then fades back into the mists from which it began. In this, he is helped by the performance of Ralf Gothóni: directing from the keyboard he produces a phenomenally intense rendition that alternates between tightly controlled tension and violent aggressive outbursts.

The Third Violin Concerto dates from the previous year, and like many of Schnittke's works has a distinctly unusual scoring. In this case, the violin is set against a 13-instrument wind band, allowing a greater intimacy than in most violin concerti. Accordingly this three-movement work is not fast-slow-fast but slow-fast-slow, with the central Agitato being the shortest movement. The musical language here is more restrained: it devolves rather much around the clash between major, minor and atonal, with the atonal aspects retreating in the finale. The outer movements are lyrical, and the central movement's frantic scrubbings provide an effective contrast to the primarily melodic (if dissonant) writing elsewhere. Again, this is a fine work, and Lubotsky's performance is almost as good as Gothóni's in the piano concerto. (Gothóni restricts himself to just conducting in this performance.)

The final work is the latest (indeed, it is one of the composer's last works) and the shortest. Schnittke's Third Violin Sonata dates from 1994, more than 25 years after the Second. Compared to the two, primarily outward-looking earlier sonatas, this is an intimate and rather bleak work, with--in comparison--rather less memorable material. Often the music seems about to fall apart entirely, even in the fast movements of this slow-fast-slow-fast four-movement structure. I don't find it as convincing as the earlier pieces, but maybe the lack of cohesion is the composer's point? Regardless, Lubotsky and the composer's wife Irina make a good attempt at justifying this rather difficult music.

This is an excellent collection, with performances ranging from good to outstanding. Schnittke fans should snap it up post-haste.