16.03.2000

review

Stylistic kaleidoscope Alfred Schnittke Psalms of repentance for mixed choir ECM New Series; Concerto grosso No1 Deutsche Grammophon

These divergent recordings clearly represent different phases in Schnittke's career. The Psalms appeared in 1988, whilst the Concerto grosso (featured here alongside pieces by Ligeti and Lutoslawski) stems from the late 1970s. Who then was Alfred Schnittke?

The composer was born in Engels, USSR, in 1934, studying music in Vienna and Moscow. Schnittke went on to teach at the Moscow Conservatory, earning a living from the production of around 60 film scores. What is most interesting about Schnittke is his cosmopolitanism, something obviously absorbed from his educational and familial background (Schnittke was of Jewish and German parentage).

After initially being heavily influenced by Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Schnittke turned to the study of the serialist techniques of the western avant-garde. It was Schnittke's heretical refusal to prostrate himself before Soviet aesthetic diktat that led to him coming under pressure (alongside Denisov and Gubaidulina) from the authorities in the 1960s, with his First Symphony (1969-72) being banished to the provinces.

It is important to note that Schnittke was not for long bound by the pure constructional techniques of the 12-tone system, seeing it correctly as an attempt to escape from the world by the imposition of rigid constraints on musical form.

The Concerto grosso No1 (performed here by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe) very obviously represents this profound shift in musical priorities. Schnittke remarked at the time of composition that because of "the plenitude of musical stimulus, mankind in general somehow lacks a unified musical consciousness. You can hear the radio, someone upstairs has the television turned up, next door there's rock music ... So I think maybe it's my task to capture this whole stylistic kaleidoscope, just so as to reflect something of this reality."

This becomes reflected in the Concerto through the slow build-up of a thoroughly bleak landscape, punctuated by increasingly terse violins. By the fifth movement we are whirled into a dense, shifting texture of 'samples' from Handel, Vivaldi, Hollywood film scores and Tchaikovsky, amongst others. It cannot be said that this makes for easy listening: indeed the Concerto tails off into a truly disturbing finale. Alongside this are fairly liberal doses of humour - in the Handel section for example. More importantly, Schnittke clearly captures the meaning of the aesthetic tasks sketched above. The contradictions of our musical consciousness are brought to life by the sharp juxtaposition of styles contained in the Concerto. Moreover, by handling Vivaldi et al in this way, Schnittke disrupts their ability to pose as eternal factors, in that they are subordinated to the overall kaleidoscopic structure of the composition.

It is fairly easy to see why the Soviet authorities branded Schnittke as a "young savage", in that their ideological system of so-called Marxism-Leninism relied precisely on the construction of an abstract, universal thought system that was extremely brittle to the touch. By highlighting contradiction and change in the cause of musical language, Schnittke could do nothing but pose questions as to the historical viability of that ideological form.

Aesthetic solutions of course remain so if they are denied an outlet into society at large, and Schnittke's musical 'critique' proved to be no exception. By 1982 he had been converted to catholicism and after a number of strokes moved to Hamburg in 1989. Since the polystylism of the 1970s Schnittke's output had gradually mellowed towards an increasing interest in religious music, which continued up until his death in 1998.

We can now turn to the Psalms of repentance, sung here by the Swedish Radio Choir. Schnittke's obvious turn away from the dissonant practices should not blind the potential listener to the fact that this is a recording of extraordinary power and sincerity. Again we are not considering an easy listen: some of the passages in the Psalms are intensely beautiful and intricate, but at the same time, as the liner notes admit, "alien and forbidding". One can also quote Uwe Schweikert's liner notes to good effect when he talks of "dark timbres, doleful music spiralling in on itself ... again and again one is reminded of the hieratic austerity of the Russian icons, which are intended to represent an idealised divine image rather than the individualised face of a human being."

This last point of Schweikert's is particularly apt when considering the Psalms and the icy collective face which the performers are asked to set to the world. Schweikert's emphasis is on repeated listening, opening up the "shades and nuances" of the work. As someone who has listened to the Psalms over a period of months, I cannot really testify to this observation, as I have found myself eternally caught up in the overall impact. It is true that on occasions the choir breaks up to reveal an individual voice, but if this is placed in the context of Schnittke's earlier output then these moments appear to represent the ghostly form of contradictions long past.

Essentially this is supreme testimony to the crisis of the artist in the modern world, in that musical technique cannot compensate for societal agonies indefinitely. The unified structures of the Psalms of repentance are possibly the ultimate proof of this.