Concerto Grosso No. 2
for violin, cello and symphony orchestra (1981-1982)
01. I. Andantino. Allegro
02. II. Pesante
03. III. Allegro		play
04. IV. Andantino

05. I. Prologue (Chorus)
06. II. Close Is The Hour (Narrator, Mephistopheles, Chorus)
07. III. Faust's Farewell To His Pupils And Friends (Chorus, Narrator)
08. IV. Faust's Confession (Faust, Chorus And Narrator)
09. V. Lament Of Faust's Friends (Chorus, Narrator)	play
10. VI. “False Consolation” (Of Faust By Mephistopheles).
(Mephistopheles - Both Parts, In Two Voices)
11. VII. The Death Of Faust (Mephistopheles, Chorus)
12. VIII. After Faust's Death (Narrator, Chorus)
13. IX. Epilogue (Chorus)
14. X. Conclusory Chorale (Four Soloists, Chorus)

Personnel:
O. Kagan - Violin (1-4)
N. Gutman – cello (1-4)
R. Kotova – Contralto (5-14)
E. Kurmangaliev – Countertenor (5-14)
N. Kurpe – Tenor (5-14)
A. Safiulin – Bass (5-14)

The USSR Ministry Of Culture Symphony Orchestra
Gennady Rozhdestvensky – conductor

This cantata was written in 1983 and is one of the most crucial compositions by Schnittke. It is written in ten episodes. The Concerto Grosso is for violin, cello and orchestra and is based on the Baroque style and combined with the musical language of the 20th century.

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Disc: 1
1. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act One: Prologue, 'Life with an idiot is full of surprises'
2. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'My friends congratulated me on my idiot'
3. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'I had been full of doubts and anxieties that winter'
4. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'Everybody laughed'
5. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'I pictured to myself a crafty and staid wise old man'
6. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'Well look what's happened - I've belched'
7. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'Sometimes I mix up my dead wives'
8. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, 'I've swapped a birdie for a pizza!'
9. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 1, Tango (Intermezzo)
10. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 2, 'I said later that if I had gone'
11. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 2, 'Look: my former fellow students'
12. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 2, 'I got down to searching for the holy simpleton'
13. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 2, 'Ekh!'
14. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 1: Scene 2, Intermezzo

Disc: 2
1. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, 'In the beginning Vova was very reserved'
2. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, 'In the evenings, to prevent Vova suffering from insomnia'
3. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, 'Once, on returning home, I chanced upon the following scene'
4. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, 'A few days later Vova started tearing up the books'
5. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, 'Suddenly, one fine day, he dumped a whole pile in the middle of the room'
6. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, 'Ekh!'
7. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 1, Intermezzo
8. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'Vova has cleaned up his act a lot'
9. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'Don't offend him. Don't traumatise Vova'
10. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'Life with an idiot is full of surprises!'
11. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'I was intrigued as to which proclivities of Vova my wife bent over backwards to
12. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'Ekh!'
13. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'Well, and now, cock-sucking reader, whoever you are'
14. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'They made their home in the second room'
15. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'We beat her up, beat her up!'
16. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'Suddenly, the wife declares: 'Vova! Either him...''
17. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'I love you. Love!'
18. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'I am Renoir'
19. Life With an Idiot, opera in 2 acts: Act 2: Scene 2, 'The guard treated me like I was one of the family'

I - Romain Bischoff
Wife - Teresa Ringholz
Vova - Howard Haskin
Guard - Leonid Zimnenko
Marcel Proust - Robin Leggate

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
Mstislav Rostropovich – conductor

What a wonderful title. The absurdist libretto of Schnittke's opera by the former 'dissident' writer Victor Erofeyev is based on his own short story and is partly a satire on Soviet life under Communism ('Vova' was Lenin's nickname, and Howard Haskin — the creator of the role — was made up to look like the former leader). Clearly, for Schnittke and other post-Soviet artists, there are still scores to setde with the past. Whether that will tell against the opera's long-term success remains to be seen.

At its worst it recalls a superior cabaret act, Schnittke's frequent recourse to parody as part of his 'polystylistic' approach sounding a touch glib. But other moments suggest wider resonances. The opera was premiered in Amsterdam last April, when this recording was made. Rostropovich, who was instrumental in the project from an early stage, conducts a brash but vital performance (he also plays the cello and piano) and the cast enters fully into the spirit of the piece. The sound has a curiously hollow quality. -- George Hall, BBC Music Magazine

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01. Sympony No 4 (41:38)
02. Requiem - Requiem (3:33)             play
03. Requiem - Kyrie (2:01)
04. Requiem - Dies Irae (1:13)
05. Requiem - Tuba Mirum (3:52)
06. Requiem - Rex Tremenda (1:16)
07. Requiem - Recordare (2:34)
08. Requiem - Lacrimosa (2:35)
09. Requiem - Domie Jesu (1:28)
10. Requiem - Hostias (1:13)
11. Requiem - Sanctus (3:45)             play
12. Requiem - Benedictus (2:05)
13. Requiem - Agnus Dei (2:27)
14. Requiem - Credo (3:57)
15. Requiem - Requiem (2) (4:01)

Stockholm Sinfonnietta
Stefan Parkman – conductor

Russian composer Alfred Schnittke wrote his Symphony No. 4 in 1983. It is a choral symphony, written for tenor, countertenor, chorus, and orchestra. It was first performed on April 12, 1984, in Moscow. The symphony is written in a single movement of 22 variations and is approximately 45 minutes in length. The form of Schnittke's Fourth Symphony is at once cross-shaped and spherical. The composer draws musically on the three main strands of Christianity—Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant—while underlying this is a three–note semitone interval motif representing synagogue chant, thus symbolizing the Jewish source of Christianity." The result, Ivan Moody writes, is that Schnittke "attempts to reconcile elements of znamennïy and Gregorian chant, the Lutheran chorale and Synagogue cantillation ... within a dense, polyphonic orchestral texture" A tenor and a countertenor also sing wordlessly at two points in the symphony. Words are saved for a finale in which all four types of church music are used contrapuntally as a four-part choir sings the Ave Maria. The choir can choose whether to sing the Ave Maria in Russian or Latin. The programmatic intent of using these different types of music, Schnittke biographer Alexander Ivashkin writes, is an insistence by the composer "on the idea ... of the unity of humanity, a synthesis and harmony among various manifestations of belief."

The Requiem (1974 - 1975) takes as its starting points the choral Russian funeral service for the dead and the bells and gongs of Stravinsky's recently completed Requiem Canticles (1965 - 1966). Composed after the piano quintet that had been dedicated to the composer's mother, Schnittke's Requiem was originally intended to be part of the incidental music for Schiller's Don Carlos. However, the scale and scope of the work effectively forced its removal from the incidental music and Schnittke re-imagined it as a separate concert work. Schnittke's setting conforms to the usual order of the Latin mass for the dead, but with the addition of a Credo as the penultimate movement and with a repetition of the opening Requiem text in place of the Lux Aeternum. A pros pro on the emotional content of the work, Schnittke remarked that "there is an escalating desire for expression which gives the work the character of a powerful confession." In order that this expression may be understood, Schnittke employs a fundamentally tonal language with roots deep in Russian chant. Scored for soloists and chorus, the work's instrumental accompaniment consists of only brass, piano, organ, and a vast array of percussion instruments including a drum kit in the work's climax. The Requiem is in 14 movements. –BIS Records

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Symphony No. 0 (40:34)
1 I. Allegro Ma Non Troppo 	12:58 	
2 II. Allegro Vivace 	7:08 	
3 III. Andante 	10:26 	
4 IV. Allegro 	9:35 	

Nagasaki (36:09)
5 I. Nagasaki, City Of Grief 	6:27 	
6 II. The Morning 	4:44 	
7 III. On That Fateful Day 	7:14 	
8 IV. On The Ashes 	5:31 	
9 V. The Sun Of Peace 	11:54 	

Hanneli Rupert – mezzo-soprano
Cape Town Opera Voice Of The Nation
Cape Philharmonic Orchestra
Owain Arwel Hughes – conductor

Aimed at the hardest of hardcore fans of post-modernist Russian composer Alfred Schnittke, this 2007 BIS disc presents two world premieres of works written while the composer was still in his early twenties and a student at the Moscow Conservatory. The Symphony No. 0 from 1956-1957 is a large-scale, four-movement work written for his composition class, and Nagasaki from 1958 is the massive five-movement oratorio for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and huge orchestra that served as his graduation piece. As performed here with energy, expertise, and enthusiasm by conductor Owain Arwel Hughes and the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra joined in Nagasaki by the Cape Town Opera Voice of the Nation chorus and mezzo Hanneli Rupert, both works are impressive student works -- the symphony's big tunes and monumental structures solidly hold together and the oratorio's huge climaxes and searing expressivity are wholly sincere -- but they are still student works. Despite Schnittke's obvious talent, these works show none of his later individuality. The symphony sounds like melancholic Myaskovsky seasoned with a dash of ironic Shostakovich and the oratorio sounds like Orff's choral-writing backed by Prokofiev's orchestral writing. Although hardcore Schnittke fans will embrace this disc, few other fans of post-modernist music will make it all the way through either the symphony's borrowed gestures or Nagasaki's blazing banalities.

Recorded in bright, open digital sound by producer Jens Braun at the Cape Town City Hall, the South African forces are tight, polished, and amazingly passionate about less than first-rate music. Recordings of Schnittke's later, greater symphonies from this same crew would be warmly welcomed. --- James Leonard, Rovi

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1. Symphony No. 3: 1. Moderato 
2. Symphony No. 3: 2. Allegro 
3. Symphony No. 3: 3. Allegro pesante        play
4. Symphony No. 3: 4. Adagio

Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Eri Klas – conductor

Alfred Schnittke's Third Symphony (1981) is an extraordinary work, even by the standards of Schnittke's iconoclastic output. Schnittke's Fourth Symphony may be more perfect, and his First more outrageousness, but Schnittke's Third remains strangely outside their canon, its visionary glance turned toward the entire Germano-Austrian symphonic tradition, perhaps the German temperament as well. This glance is wise and deeply sympathetic, but also doomed, at times fiercely tragic.

What results in Schnittke's vast but "traditional" four-movement scheme is thus a kind of German encyclopedic history, inscribed with symphonic terms and gravity. It is Schnittke's "Philosophical" Symphony, with all the sweeping scope that word implies: within its motives and forms flow the evolving spirits of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Weill, Stockhausen, and Zimmermann. Yet the Symphony is also a river of conceptual histories: its vortex swallows Kant's Enlightenment, Hegel's "Geist," Schopenhauer's Pessimism, and Nietzsche's Superman. And it also swallows Wagner's epic operatic myth of corruption, heroism, apocalypse, Das Ring des Nibelungen--and by association its terrifyingly real successor, the Germany of World War II. –BIS-records

Schnitke' s Third Symphony is possibly his most daring and ambitious musical project. The impressive orchestral mass' employment, the exploratory character of every one of its four movements and the overwhelming perspective that hovers it, make of this work hard to label it.

The sidereal inspiration, the different inflections that remind us to Shostakovich, Mahler, Messian and Hovaness, the memorable Mozart's tribute as well its contemplative zero atmosphere mesmerizes even the most exigent listener. I just wouldn't hesitate for a second, to include it among the most relevant, conspicuous and transcendental artistic feats of the final decades of the past Century. –Hiram Gomez Pardo

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01. Symphony No. 9 - Andante    [0:19:56.89]
02. Symphony No. 9 - Moderato    [0:08:25.01]
03. Symphony No. 9 - Presto    [0:08:31.97]
04. Alexander Raskatov - Nuc Dimittis    [0:16:10.85]

Elena Vassilieva - mezzo-soprano
The Hilliard Ensemble
Dresdner Philharmonie
Dennis Russell Davies – conductor

Composed shortly before his death in 1998, Schnittke’s ultimate symphony – actually his very last work – is a “Ninth” in a most unusual sense: Put down with a shaky left hand by an artist who had survived four strokes and was laterally debilitated, it is an impressive triumph of spiritual energy over physical constraints. The composer’s widow Irina treated the barely-legible manuscript as a testament and was long doubtful whom to entrust with the difficult task of deciphering and reconstructing the highly expressive three movements for large orchestra (some 38 minutes of music). She finally settled on Moscow-born Alexander Raskatov, who not only provided a thorough score but, convinced that Schnittke had intended to write a fourth movement, also developed the idea to add an independent epilogue, the “Nunc Dimitis” (“Lord, let thy servant now depart into thy promis'd rest”) for mezzo soprano, vocal quartett and orchestra. It is based on the famous text by orthodox monk Starets Siluan and on verses by Joseph Brodsky, Schnittke’s favourite poet. Both pieces were given their first performances in the Dresden Frauenkirche in summer 2007 by the musicians of this world première recording which feautures long-standing ECM protagonists the Hilliard Ensemble and conductor Dennis Russell Davies. --- ecmrecords.com

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Concerto Grosso I Für 2 Violinen, Cembalo, Präp. Klavier Und Streicher (1977)
1 	Preludio 	5:59
2 	Toccata 	4:44
3 	Recitavo 	8:50
4 	Cadenza 	2:30
5 	Rondo 	7:30
6 	Postludio 	2:36

7 	Konzert Für Oboe, Harfe Und Streichorchester (1971) 	17:09
8 	Konzert Für Klavier Und Streichorchester (1979) 	20:30

Kjell Axel Lier - harp (7)
Helén Jahren - oboe (7)
Roland Pöntinen - piano (1-6, 8)
New Stockholm Chamber Orchestra
Lev Markiz - conductor

If Alfred Schnittke is a "poster child" of musical postmodernism, his Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977) is his poster work. One of the few orchestral works written after 1945 to enter the repertoire of ensembles worldwide, its uneasy fusion of old and new, high and low, and grave and comical captures what is most Schnittkean about Schnittke. This is no mean feat: the "Schnittkean" is a quality so conflicted, so nomadic and self-deconstructing, that it is almost illusory; the second one catches up to it, it's just fallen through a trap door. Likewise, Concerto Grosso No. 1 is a high-velocity funhouse of masks. Their unveiling is uproarious and caustically black, their liveliness optimistic, but their trajectory doomed.

This unveiling is also Schnittke's central compositional strategy, something he calls "polystylism." More than mere eclecticism, "polystylism" is for Schnittke a musical last resort for building large works; it is a means for dynamic musical theater, whether comedy or tragedy; it is also, as Schnittke believes, the best way of creating successful musical tension amidst unprecedented musical freedom. And so polystylism is eclectic, but never indifferent; it always intends to confront, surprise, and subvert with utmost calculation. Hence the Schnittkean paradox: things stick together by falling apart, in exactly the right places, at exactly the right times. ---Seth Brodsky, allmusic.com

Commissioned by the great duo of Heinz and Ursula Holliger, Concerto For Oboe And Harp is a memorial for two of Schnittke's close friends. And it is this basic lament-process that entirely overtakes the piece from its first notes to its last; indeed, so unyielding is the work's progression that it suggests the archaic rituals of formal tragedy, a literal tragoedia or "goat-song" with the oboe and harp serving as a modern-day aulos and kithara, sounding a sorrow which must dig back to antiquity for its just shape.

In serving this lament, however, Schnittke constructs a rather brilliant harmonic and gestural edifice. Though the melodic and intervalic writing in general feels extremely free and atonal, much of the actual pitch-logic of piece stems from a "row" of chromatically descending tones; this chromatic descending motif has been a standard gesture of lament since the early-Baroque period. However, the descending motif remains somewhat subliminal, since Schnittke constantly transposes the pitches to create extremely wide, expressionistically gestural lines. The effect is not unlike a small boat sinking in a storm: its submergence is paradoxically counterbalanced by the sheer violence with which the passengers panic, and the turbulence with which the waves crash. Here perhaps another writer close to Schnittke's heart deserves mention: Dostoyevsky's notion of the "non-Euclidean" (articulated through Ivan Karamazov) seems quite apt here, in this music in which every direction, even the most upward-leaping, ultimately points downwards.

The form, somewhat rare in Schnittke's later work, is a single arch-form, which expands and contracts like a sorrowful monodic breath. After a slowly unfolding introduction, the tone changes when the oboe begins to re-direct the ensemble upward; proximitous falls begin to alternate with sudden spins upward, and a kind of elastic, hyper-expressive vortex ensues. The harp begins to strum thick, scrim-like chords as the oboe skips and stutters, and eventually the discourse begins to break down, fulminating in a scream-like climax and breathless coda. In truth, the only the work itself "points downwards"; like Kafka's work, however, its vision (even as it plummets) never lets the heavens out of its sight. ---Seth Brodsky, allmusic.com

Alfred Schnittke wrote his Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra in one extended movement. It begins with a long, slow introduction from the piano. When the strings enter, the piano joins them to play various fragments of melody. These fragments are repeated and elaborated upon, and then seem to drop out of sight. This portion of the work includes a passage that resembles a Russian Orthodox hymn and a passage reminiscent of Prokofiev. The work comes to a quasi-climax, but immediately after the massed fortissimo there follows only silence. After this false climax, the piano has a cadenza reminiscent of the introduction, but which also includes echoes of the earlier music. The music moves to a frenzied climax again, and this time the climax is a true one. After it ends, however, the music becomes slower and bleaker. This section features a lamenting string quartet with occasional virtuoso figurations from the piano. The work ends in an ambiguous mood, reminiscent of what has come before, but also suggestive that there is hope for what comes after. Schnittke's piano writing is idiomatic and virtuosic, and much of the writing for the strings has a tonal character, making the Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra one of Schnittke's more accessible works. It is recommended for anyone wanting an introduction to this unique composer. ---Andrew Lindemann Malone, allmusic.com

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01. First Movement (21:24)
02. Second Movement (14:48)
03. Third Movement (9:00)          play
04. Fourth Movement (27:15)
05. Applause (4:20)

Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Leif Segerstam – conductor

Schnittke (b. 1934) is a Russian composer living in Germany and his music comes from all over Europe, ranging back three centuries if it wants to. His Symphony 1 is a harrowing collage of European musical motifs (not actual quotes), but he's got the last three centuries and all those cultures thrown into the mix. The first movement is particularly brilliant with clashing bells, rising to an ecstatic pitch. The following movements each take their turn with Schnittke's alchemistry. Schnittke's a difficult composer to get to know, but this particular symphony (and this recording) is a good place to start. -- Paul Cook

Schnittke himself noted: " While composing the symphony for four years, I simultaneously worked on the music to M. Romm's film I Believe.... Together with the shooting crew I looked through thousands of meters of documentary film. Gradually they formed in my mind a seemingly chaotic but inwardly orderly chronicle of the 20th century."

The First Symphony of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke was written between 1969 and 1974.

Scored for a very large orchestra, it is recognised as one of Schnittke's most extreme essays in aleatoric music: from the outset the piece is loud, brash and chaotic, and it imports motifs from all parts of the Western classical tradition. Schnittke includes a choreography for the musicians themselves, and in a manner similar to Haydn's Farewell Symphony, leave and re-enter the stage at points marked in the score.

The symphony was premiered on 9 February 1974, in Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod). The Gorky Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

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Three Sacred Hymns
1. Hail to the Holy Virgin
2. Lord Jesus, Son of God
3. Our Father (The Lord's Prayer)

4. Symphony No. 4

Iaroslav Zdorov – countertenor
Dmitri Pianov - tenor
Igor Khudolei - piano
Evgeniya Khlynova - celesta
Elena Adamovich – harpsichord

Russian State Symphonic Cappella
Russian State Symphony Orchestra
Valéry Polyansky – conductor

This Chandos disc leads off with the "Three Sacred Hymns," sung by the Russian State Symphonic Cappella. These are haunting and prayerful, and serve as a perfect introduction to one of Schnittke's most perfectly realized works, Symphony No. 4 (1984). Valery Polyansky leads the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, recorded in Moscow in 1994. Polyansky's entire series of Schnittke recordings for Chandos is superb.

The liner notes by Ronald Weitzman are very helpful in untangling the single movement work's complexities, but go into such detail as to lose the forest for the trees in terms of what the Symphony actually sounds like. It tells the story of Christ's life through Mary's eyes, following the Catholic Rosary. (Schnittke converted to his mother's Catholicism late in life, though he tended to rely more on Russian Orthodox elements in his sacred music.) It begins slowly and mysteriously, the sound of prayer, and gradually grows louder and more complex, culminating successively in two great terror-filled climaxes, the second of which marks the Crucifixion. Building on Beethoven and Mahler's symphonic innovations incorporating vocals, Schnittke uses not only tenor and countertenor voices at key junctures, and a chorus for the finale, but also features passages that sound like a piano concerto. A trio of piano, celesta and harpsichord is subtly featured throughout the work, but the piano takes dramatic solo turns as the crescendos build.

In the end, of course, comes the Resurrection, as Love triumphs over Evil. The chorus sings Ave Maria, "Hail to the Holy Virgin," recapituating the first of the "Three Sacred Hymns." Bells chime and there is a strong sensation of being carried out of a church where the choir sings, up and out on the bells toward God.

Symphony No. 4 is elaborately and carefully constructed, both musically and in terms of religious symbolism. Schnittke uses themes representing the three main strands of Christianity -- Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant -- as well as a theme representing Judaism, and interweaves them. Out of these themes he constructs a plot that follows the Rosary through the states of Joy, Sorrow and Glory, and each of these contains five episodes, telling the story of Christ's birth, life, death and resurrection. --- R. Hutchinson

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1	Symphony No. 6: Allegro moderato			
2	Symphony No. 6: Presto			
3	Symphony No. 6: Adagio			
4	Symphony No. 6: Allegro vivace			
5	Symphony No. 7: Andante			
6	Symphony No. 7: Largo			
7	Symphony No. 7: Allegro

Michael Wright (Double Bass), 
Nigel Seaman (Tuba), 
David Buckland (Contrabassoon),
David Nolan (Violin)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Tadaaki Otaka – conductor

This issue fills the last gap in the discography of Schnittke's symphonies, and I salute the enterprise of all concerned. Butt have to say that the BBC National Orchestra of Wales could hardly have taken on a tougher assignment.

Rostropovich and his National Orchestra of Washington gave the première of the Sixth Symphony in September 1993, in an open-air concert in Red Square which turned into a demonstration in support of Boris Yeltsin (an event not mentioned in the otherwise exceptionally helpful bookletessay by Ronald Weitzmann). The audience was thoroughly bemused on that occasion, and it's not difficult to see why.

The symphony begins promisingly with an outraged chordal explosion reminiscent of the blackest of Schnittke's black moods. Immediately, however, it splinters into disconsolate fragments which then continue to trot across the score like some once-powerful machine now running on the last dregs of a fiat battery. And so it goes on, and on, through a desultory re-run of the four-movement symphonic scheme. No polystylistic shenanigans, no collisions, visions, or out-of-body experiences, of the kind that make so much of Schnittke's output so memorable and distinctive.

Something of the old magic returns at the end of the three-movement Seventh Symphony of 1993. Here Schnittke finally assembles a haunting melody out of the shattered fragments of a oncemeaningful language, placing it in sepulchral solos for double-bassoon, tuba and double-bass, rather as Mahler does in the slow movement of his First Symphony. This encourages us to go back and try to make sense of the rest-which is still a tall order. Schnittke does not merely "feel the air of another planet", as Schoenberg did when he plunged into atonality, he actually talks its language. All credit to Tadaaki Otaka and the BBC orchestra for sticking to the problematic task of deciphering and communicating these cryptic messages. ---DJF, gramophone.net

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