Schnittke: Film Music

Alfred Schnittke - Cello Concerto No. 2 & Concerto Grosso No. 2 (1992) {BIS Schnittke Edition, BIS-567} (Item #15)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 235 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 188 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 34 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1992 Grammofon AB BIS | BIS-CD-567
Classical / Contemporary Classical / 20th Century

Schnittke's concerto is blackly and bleakly rhapsodic with a pretty assertive vein of dissonance. The concerto is a disquieting nightmare. Notable snapshots include the abrasive ghoulish whinnying of the cello at 1:22. A hair-raising sound. The slow-stepping grave is overwhelming and Schnittke's beloved harpsichord puts in an appearance here. The final passacaglia is longest of the five movements at 16.05 and draws on a theme from his music for the film Agony. The film score is recorded on OLYMPIA OCD606 and is well worth seeking out (Schnittke's film music is not to be dismissed). This is a depressive compelling whirlpool of a work.

Alfred Schnittke - Peer Gynt (1994) {2CD Set, BIS Schnittke Edition, BIS-677~8} (Item #17)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 534 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 315 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 114 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1994 Grammofon AB BIS | BIS-CD-677~8
Classical / Contemporary Classical / 20th Century

Alfred Schnittke's score for the full length ballet, 'Peer Gynt,' is one of the orchestral masterworks of his final period. The libretto transplants Peer from the situations in Ibsen's famous play to analogous ones of the modern world. The musical universe is as far removed from the world of Grieg's famous incidental music as can be imagined. The composer's famous polystylism is used to depict the various worlds that Peer encounters along his travels–a ragtime polka for Hollywood and the film industry, a pseudo bit of Grieg for his yearnings for home, and so forth. Because of the dramatic context, the individual numbers are of manageable length, and the composer's experience as the creator of some sixty film scores comes fully into play.

Full marks to Nimbus for variety. The danger is that three such different composers, combined in a way you would never expect in a concert, will cancel each other out. Fortunately, the performances are strong enough – even when heard in close succession – to justify the enterprise, and the recordings are no less successful in the way they capture the intimacy of tone characteristic of all four compositions.

Metamorphosis - for me - has always been a concept taken from the script of a film noir and occasionally translated into real life - or culled from a Hitchcock movie or from Alice in Wonderland. From a purely aesthetic (and artistic) point of view I have been especially interested in two things - creating the "inexistent" and transforming "worlds", and also in consolidating what is invisible to the human eye, or what is inaudible to the human ear.