Symphonie n° 6 - Concerto grosso n° 2

Chronique

If musicologists say that Alfred Schnittke is a composer of polystylistic, parodistic post-modernist music, what can anyone do but agree? Anything would be better than listening to his Concerto grosso No. 2. After a very short while, the patchwork of quotations, pastiches, homages, and outright thefts becomes unbearable and one is willing to accede to anything rather than be forced to listen to the whole work. And if musicologists say that Schnittke is a composer of polymorphously perverse post-Shostakovich symphonies, what can anyone do but concur? Anything would be better than listening his Symphony No. 6. After a very short while, the work's extreme violence, enormous languor, and unrelieved hysteria become unendurable and one is willing to concede anything rather than having to listen to the whole work. It really doesn't matter how good the performance is when the music is unbearable and unendurable. In any event, the performances by Valery Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra with violinist Tatjana Grindenko and cellist Alexander Ivashkin are worse than most other recordings of the works. Polyansky is barely competent in romantic music but he's out of his league in Schnittke's parodistic and perverse music. The RSSO gets through the works with grim determination and Grindenko and Ivashkin get through the concerto without betraying any doubt as to its content. Chandos' sound is vivid and aggressive.
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