Cover photo by Philippe Bout on Unsplash I’ve been hard at work on music lectures lately, with only a couple of weeks until I present Beethoven’s magnificent ninth symphony to an audience who just a few years ago had only … Continue reading The Potential for Scholarship
performed by the Kronos Quartet, or below by the Quatuor Molinari The treatment of the instruments and the formal process aim for the impression of a quasi-improvisation in which the “uncertainty” is continually increasing. In the second movement it explodes … Continue reading Schnittke String Quartet no. 1
performed by Mark Lubotsky and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra under Eri Klas, available on Spotify (cover image by Bohdan Lesiv) I see a desperate striving to find myself in the work on this concerto. This quest was very rarely successful, … Continue reading Schnittke Violin Concerto no. 1
performed by the Cape Town Philharmonic under Owain Arwel Hughes, available on Spotify (cover image by Serge Kutuzov) Strong arguments exist both for and against publishing works that composers either themselves decided not to publish or later withdrew (or perhaps … Continue reading Schnittke Symphony no. 0
performed by Simon Smith (available on Spotify, but not YouTube) The music of Alfred Schnittke has always delivered on its promise of darkness, but one must occasionally remind oeself [sic] that man could be really funny sometimes; on his misshapen circle, … Continue reading Schnittke: 8 Pieces for piano
performed by Carolyn Huebl, violin; Mark Wait, piano (You can find this recording on Spotify, or with different performers on SoundCloud, but probably only if you’re in the U.S.) (cover image by Jez Timms) Alfred Schnittke published four violin concertos … Continue reading Schnittke Violin Sonata (1955)
performed by Gidon Kremer and The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner, with cadenzas by Alfred Schnittke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy4Giri3QY4 (cover image by Steven Wang) This is one of only a few violin concertos we’ve discussed on … Continue reading Beethoven Violin Concerto in D, op. 61
performed by Boris Berman and the Vermeer Quartet, or as below (with the composer’s wife at the piano) I had to take what I wrote from imaginary spaces defined in terms of sound and put it into the psychological space … Continue reading Schnittke Quintet for Piano and Strings
performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Leif Segerstam, or below by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky While composing the symphony for four years, I simultaneously worked on the music to M. Romm‘s film I Believe…. … Continue reading Schnittke Symphony no. 1
(This piece was recently featured on a concert program I planned over at my Substack. That’s where I’m writing these days, so please go check it out.) performed by Roland Pöntinen and the New Stockholm Chamber Orchestra under Lev Markiz, … Continue reading Alfred Schnittke: Concerto for piano and strings
Fugue for Thought 