Schnittke: Cello Concerto / Stille Musik / Cello Sonata

Description

Alfred Schnittke(1934-1998)Cello Concerto (1986)Stille Musik (1979)Sonata for violoncelloand piano (1978)The Russian composer Alfred Schnittke was born in 1934, the son of ajournalist of Lithuanian-Jewish origin and a mother who taught German. His birthplace, Engels, was the former capital of the Volga Republic, but he began hisreal musical education in Vienna, where his father worked for two years from1946 until 1948, editing a Soviet Army newspaper. There followed a period atthe October Revolution Music Academy in Moscow and further study at the MoscowConservatory, with lessons in instrumentation with Nikolay Rakov andcounterpoint and composition with Yevgeny Golubev. He completed his work as apostgraduate student in 1961 and for the next ten years taught at theConservatory, before embarking on a free?¡lance career in Moscow in 1972.Changes in cultural policy in the Soviet Union later enabled Schnittke toconsolidate his international position as one of the leading composers of thelater twentieth century, emphasized by his close association with the mostdistinguished performers. Throughout his career he showed a particular interestin string textures, from the time of his first Violin Concerto, writtenin 1957 and revised six years later, to later work for the viola, the ViolaConcerto of 1985 and the Monologue for Viola and Strings, writtenin 1989. More recent compositions have included additions to his ConcertiGrossi, the sixth of which, for violin, piano and orchestra, was completedin 1993, with a Concerto for Three, calling for violin, viola and cellowith an instrumental ensemble, published in 1995, to be given an authoritativeperformance by musicians particularly associated with his work, the violinistGidon Kremer, the viola-player Yuri Bashmet and the cellist MstislavRostropovich.In 1989, with political changes in Russia, Schnittke was able to acceptthe position of Professor of Composition at the Hamburg Musikhochschule, buthis deteriorating health, after a stroke he had suffered in 1985, madecomposition a slow process, leading, in 1994, to a fourth stroke that preventedhim from speaking or writing. He had, however, been able to complete his EighthSymphony in that year. He was prolific as a composer, writing a quantityof music that found a ready audience outside the Soviet Union, particularlyafter 1989, when his work was made more widely known abroad. In an interview in1977 he explained his method of working, allowing six or seven months in theyear for composition for films, leaving a few months for his own work. He wenton to explain the then available possibilities provided by television and radiofor hearing a wide variety of music, enabling him to live in what he describedas an Ives atmosphere. Often allusive in style, his work might shock, as in theinnovative cadenza he provided for the Beethoven Violin Concerto and themimed cadenza for his own Fourth Violin Concerto, and he drew on wideterms of reference and sources of inspiration, as in