Piano Quintet
Peaceful Music (Stille Musik) for violin and cello
String Trio
"Sounding Letters (Klingende Buchstaben)" for solo cello
Fuga

Mark Lubotsky & Dimity Hall (violin)
Theodore Kuchar & Irini Morozova (viola)
Alexander Ivashkin & Julian Smiles(cello)
Irina Schnittke (piano)

Naxos 8.554728

Naxos here achieves the considerable coup of employing both Alexander Ivashkin, the composer's champion and biographer, and his widow Irina. Recorded in 1999, the performances derive from concerts given at that year's Australian Festival of Chamber Music. With the exception of the early, student piece Fuga, for solo violin, the works chosen represent a period of stylistic consolidation for Schnittke. Lacking the flash theatricality most readily associated with him, they none the less contain some of his most profound music.

The key work is the Piano Quintet (1972 to 1976), at once a memorial to the composer's mother and the piece in which he seems most clearly to have taken on Shostakovich's mantle. In the bitter waltzes of the second and fifth movements it is as if that composer is refracted through frosted glass (or seen through tears). Irina's piano is rightly prominent, the engine driving the other players' heightened expressivity, exposing the vulnerability and raw pain behind the Technicolor masks. There is something more than authenticity involved in hearing the ideas of a dead composer, writing in memory of his dead mother, brought to life by his widow.

The other substantial work is the String Trio written for Alban Berg's centenary, a less eerie, less angst-ridden utterance with its echoes of Schubert. The performance is less strongly projected than that of the Quintet, but is evocative enough. The typically intangible Stille Musik and the short Klingende Buchstaben, a tribute to Ivashkin, benefit from the latter's committed playing. Fuga, recorded here for the first time, becomes more Schnittke-like as it progresses from the Bach-Shostakovich of its opening.

The whole programme is well thought out, and if not everyone seems equally comfortable (the veteran Lubotsky's playing is not always ideally clean), it is rare to find the more demanding sort of contemporary music at this price. What of the alternatives? While direct competitors don't entirely avoid blandness, it is Kremer, Bashmet and friends, differently coupled and recorded on both sides of the Iron Curtain, who most effectively plumb the depths of Schnittke's expressive world. Also recommended: the Trio Sonata, Bashmet's arrangement of the Trio for string ensemble (RCA, 2/92), and In memoriam, the composer's own, more radical orchestral reworking of the Quintet (Sony, 7/92). With the advantage of economy, the present disc offers decent, unspectacular sound and comes with helpful notes by Richard Whitehouse (it's only the back inlay that muddles chronology). All hail to the enterprise of Naxos in issuing it.

David Gutman
Gramophone, June 2001

The impressive group of musicians here known collectively as the 1999 AFCM Ensemble, came together to perform at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, North Queensland. If this recording is anything to go by the festival must be an enterprising one indeed. Credit must also be given to Naxos for an enterprising release. I sincerely hope that there are future Schnittke releases in the pipeline which build into a body of recordings as impressive as the now well advanced Lutoslawski series.

Throughout his career Schnittke showed a continued interest and consummate skill in writing for strings, producing a steady flow of works for solo and chamber groups. Here we have five works spanning thirty two years, from the remarkably assured Fuga, written in 1953 when the composer was just nineteen, to the intense String Trio of 1985, the year the composer suffered the first of a series of strokes which were to plague him until his death in 1998.

The Piano Quintet of 1976, which is the centrepiece of the disc, has become one of the composer's best known works. It is undoubtedly a seminal work, demonstrating clearly the "polystylistic" element of Schnittke's music which became increasingly evident in the middle phase of his career. The overriding influence on the character of the work was the death of the composer's mother, as well as, during the latter stages of its composition, the death of Shostakovich whose ghost is evident in the background. In fact both the Piano Quintet and the String Trio are full of ghosts. As Richard Whitehouse points out in his excellent booklet note Mahler, Berg and Schubert are often not far away. The performances of both works are highly committed. The dark, often unsettling nature of the music is caught to powerful effect. The nightmarish second movement of the quintet is particularly effective, the piano part receiving sensitive treatment from the composer's widow (try from around 2'40" where eerie chromatic string writing leads into the haunting waltz melody), whilst in the trio one can actually feel the struggles of the composer trying to come to terms with his material as strands of melody try to assert themselves against the more dissonant backdrop. The passion and dedication of the players to the music is evident throughout.

Of the shorter works on the disc I found Fuga particularly intriguing. Partly due to the fact that upon hearing the work for the first time it is clear, even at the tender age of nineteen, that many of the hallmarks of Schnittke's mature style are already in place (the ghost here is Bach) but also because it is superbly performed by Mark Lubotsky. The remaining two pieces receive equally strong performances although are perhaps a little less memorable as works in themselves.

Overall I have nothing but praise for this recording. As well as the commitment of the playing the sound is vivid (if a little forward), and at budget price I can strongly recommend it to those willing to take a chance and explore new repertoire as well as those who are more familiar with Schnittke. In both emotional and physical terms this is not easy music but given the time for repeated listening the rewards to be had are considerable.

Christopher Thomas
MusicWeb, February 2001