Alfred Schnittke - Piano Quintet, I

Piano Quintet (1972 -1976)
I. Moderato
II. In Tempo di Valse
III. Andante
IV. Lento
V. Moderato Pastorale
Irina Scnittke, piano
Mark Lubotsky, violin
Dimity Hall, violin
Irina Morozova, viola
Julian Smiles, cello
Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quintet is a dark and heavy planet. Even in the midst of his bewilderingly prolific output, this extremely personal work commands a massive gravity; it seems to orient, arrange, and set in motion so many of Schnittke's works, before and after. If one wants to find the founding trauma for such a consistently agonizing body of artistic work, it can be found in the Piano Quintet.
This centrality may owe much to the quintet's function: conceived as a memorial to the composer's mother, who died of a stroke in September 1972, here's a composition whose substance was drawn from a real event, powerfully tangible and irrevocable. This kind of reality had not been Schnittke's basis for previous works. His Symphony No. 1 (1972) and other contemporaneous works are brazenly extroverted stylistic carnivals, full of fantasy, denunciation, and dark humor, and are largely artistic statements on art or cultural critiques on culture itself.
In this light, the Piano Quintet was a radical departure into an entirely personal sphere. This shift caused the composer tremendous difficulty. After finishing the first movement very quickly, Schnittke was blocked, "unable to continue because I had to take what I wrote from an imaginary space defined in terms of sound and put it into the psychological space as defined by life, where excruciating pain seems almost unserious, and one must fight for the right to use dissonance, consonance, and assonance."
Hence the Piano Quintet was shelved, and Schnittke did not resume work on it for almost four years. When he did pick up the work again, his musical temperament had changed, becoming more distilled, tauter, and more unabashedly morbid. Schnittke had perfected a personal sound, a dense, claustrophobic web of chromatic clusters. This signatory sound, rich yet obscure, serves as the backdrop for much of his succeeding work, and is seamlessly crafted into this work. The second movement is a wraith-like slow waltz on the name of B-A-C-H (H in German notation is B, B is B flat). The waltz is the only "polystylistic" concession in the piece, and throughout the movement consistently descends back into torturous clusters.
The next two movements form the heart of the work, pulling it increasingly inward. Schnittke explains that they "are real experiences of grief which I would prefer not to comment on because they are of a very personal nature." Both movements bind themselves in shells of stasis; each movement suffers its own shocked outburst and epiphany. Eventually the fourth movement ruptures the thick web of chromaticism that seems to paralyze the work.
After its crushing, cathartic crisis on a single, repeated note, the movement ebbs into the work's final bars, based on a 14-measure theme repeated 14 times in the piano. Over this theme, Schubert-like in its studied rusticity, one hears blanched recollections of previous passages; everything liquefies as it materializes, swept along by the piano theme's current. Eventually a faded reconciliation emerges and the strings are silenced; the work ends on the sonic outskirts as Schnittke instructs the pianist to play tonlos, "without tone."
There is hyper-sentimentality in Schnittke's quintet, a weird excess of morose emotion that exists in few other of his works. Somehow the sentimentality works here, perhaps because of the sincerity of the utterance, perhaps because, despite wearing his heart on his sleeve, Schnittke is not merely personal but also highly idiosyncratic. The work is an uncomfortable twentieth century classic, and a key to Schnittke's music in general. [allmusic.com]
Art by Zhang Xiaogan

[@mannmusica]

THIS is what for me great 20th century music is all about. Technique is nothing without expression and emotion

[@jun6161n]

alfred schnittke and Zhang Xiaogan. it is a good combination. thank you.

[@dsch0]

I noticed that some of these passages throughout the quintet had very strange notes, almost as if in quarter-tone intervals. Is this piece quarter-tone?

[@gonzalosaavedra7]

Absolutely. Schnittke does use a lot of mricrotonalism here, so he gets these amazing and dense chords and magnificent quarter tone counterpoint!

[@jamessalvatore7054]

Fantastic

[@quagapp]

Fascinating - I prefer Schnittke to Shostakovch in many ways. Different composers but they seem to play the latter more (almost too much more) on our local Concert Programme (Auckland, NZ)

[@mohitshrivastava285]

Alfred Schnittke I934-I999 remembered as d Mozart of 20th century,was d first modern composers to restor Conserto Crosso form.

[@SignalMarichka]

maestro*

[@MarcusHK1]

This is a fascinating piece I'm discovering at the moment, remarkable by its originality, refinement, and diversity.

[@RemovdSande11]

this music makes this picture come alive . Amazing picture, with amazing music. A true meastro.

[@lucioblanel69]

Real Masterpiece!! Thanks!

[@odedfried-gaon2880]

WOW!

[@sopaanecdotal727]

A true master piece. This could totally fit on a Resident Evil or a Silent Hill game.