Search - Alfred Schnittke, Boris Berman :: Schnittke: Piano Musik

That Alfred Schnittke died just months before this CD's release is of course no coincidence: Chandos seeks to represent his output in its most intense, revealing light as a tribute. These piano works aptly delineate several threads in Schnittke's demanding repertoire for the solo piano. The 1960s-era works engage serialism interrogatively, with the Prelude and Fugue (1963) steering 12-note rows in different, opposing directions for traction (a technique that makes the Works for Cello and Piano equally fascinating). The Variations on a Chord (1965) takes its cue from Webern's Piano Variations, Op. 27, playing and replaying tones that recur only in the octaves where they originally surfaced. The variations run from subtle, dreamy ambience to hard-hit toccatas, all of them smelling poignantly of Schnittke's genius for merged styles and end-runs around notions like serialism and pianistic canons. The Improvisation and Fugue (1965), written for the Tchaikovsky International Competition of Pianists (but unperformed until 1975) likewise spins 12-note rows that run canon-like through variations, ending in twists of expanded tones and ringing sustain, as if in wreckage. Heading away from sheer thickness of sound, Schnittke scripted Five Aphorisms (1990) with pithy nodes aplenty, heavily interposing silences among tones. Finally, the Second Piano Sonata has harrowing, long-strung notes that seem to ponder mortality and the limitations Schnittke encountered with his failing health. The Third Sonata interjects extremely slowed pianism with long, silent pauses before turbulent motions turn to pounding energy. Slack solemnity is the Allegro section's main weave, and it smacks of the sadness Schnittke's death has left. --Andrew Bartlett