| Site review by Castor October 9, 2008
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
Having recorded three superb volumes of Schnittke’s film music for Capriccio, Frank Strobel and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra turn their attention to more serious fare, a coupling of Schnittke’s three piano concertos. These were written between 1960 and 1988 and are stylistically very different from each other as well as being scored for different instrumental combinations.
The first concerto (1960) is cast in a conventional three-movement form (Allegro- Andante- Allegro) and was written following Schnittke’s graduation from the academy of music in Moscow. After its premier, the work disappeared until its re-discovery in November 2005 for a performance in Berlin by the artists on this SACD.
The concerto begins with a percussive and driving allegro that not surprisingly shows the influence of both Prokofiev and Bartok (particularly the Second Piano Concerto) and is brilliantly played here by Ewa Kupiec.
The mysterious opening theme of the long Andante, played over irregular base drum beats, eventually leads to a hauntingly nostalgic passage (from 3’ 52”) that one could almost imagine Rachmaninov might have written had he lived until the 1960’s. The music then becomes more animated and anguished leading to a massive cadenza before finally returning to the calm of the opening. The virtuosic jazzy finale, featuring many exciting interchanges between the orchestra’s percussion section and the soloist, brings this bracing concerto to a thrilling conclusion.
The Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1979) has already appeared on SACD in a very fine performance by Constantine Orbelian and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra on Delos see Shostakovich/Schnittke - Moscow Chamber Orchestra/Orbelian, but this one is equally recommendable; less intense perhaps, but with a greater degree of restraint and sense of inwardness, aided by a more distanced and less claustrophobic recording quality than that found on the Delos version. Once again Ewa Kupiec’s playing seems totally idiomatic in this music.
The Concerto for Piano Four Hands and Chamber Orchestra (1988) was written for the composer’s wife Irina Schnittke and Victoria Postnikova, wife of the conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. These three artists performed it with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in 1990 and subsequently recorded it (with a different orchestra), on a CD that is still available on the Warner budget Apex label. The opening is permeated by the sound of tolling bells first on the two pianos and then in the orchestra, and throughout its single movement span the work alternates between despair and outbursts of anger that remain unresolved even in the bleak and inconclusive final bars. This is by no means easy listening. In this work Ewa Kupiec is partnered by the young Swedish pianist Maria Lettberg who has already recorded an impressive set of Scriabin’s complete solo piano works on the now defunct Capriccio label.
Thanks to the fine acoustic of the Jesus Christus Kirche, Berlin and the excellent balance the engineers have achieved between piano(s) and orchestra, the recording has captured every detail of these complex scores with ease and even the considerable percussive outbursts in the last of the concertos are handled without strain. The surround channels add a pleasing and natural degree of ambience.
If this programme appeals to you do not hesitate.
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Copyright © 2008 Graham Williams and SA-CD.net
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