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Alfred Schnittke - Concerto Grosso No. 4 (Symphony No. 5) - GSO, Neeme Järvi (1988) {BIS Schnittke Edition, BIS-427} (Item #2}

Posted By: ruskaval

Date: 25 Dec 2019 08:16:11

Alfred Schnittke - Concerto Grosso No. 4 (Symphony No. 5) - GSO, Neeme Järvi (1988) {BIS Schnittke Edition, BIS-427} (Item #2}
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© 1988 Grammofon AB BIS | BIS-CD-427
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Concerto / Symphony

Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 4/Symphony No. 5 was commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam for its centenary. Riccardo Chailly led the orchestra in its premiere performance on November 10th, 1988. However, Neemi Jarvi led the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra of Sweden in this, the work's first recording, in December 1988, released on BIS in 1989.

When I first heard this recording a few years ago (after giving up on a Chandos recording of Valery Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra in that fine series of Schnittke symphonies), I thought it was merely garish and overwrought. I do not consider it to be nearly as accomplished or as moving as his Symphony No. 4 of 1984, a work of religious devotion. But coming back to it again, and trying to relate to it on its own terms – on the composer's terms – I had an epiphany. It is well known that Schnittke, while baptized a Catholic and a confessing Orthodox Russian, was deeply immersed in all manner of spiritual and occult beliefs, including Gnosticism. I believe this "Concerto Grosso No. 4/Symphony No. 5 (39'24 – 1988) makes sense as a nightmare gnostic vision. (In gnostic belief, the Creator God, the creator of the material world, is an evil, false god known as the Demiurge. This Demiurge is believed to be an emanation from the True God at several steps removed, steps that devolve through layers of distortion and deception. Thus gnostics seek inner mystical insight beyond the material plane.)

The short opening Allegro (4'36) is in mock baroque style (actually mock Stravinsky-baroque-pastiche), featuring violin, oboe, and harpsichord. The mood is one of bright gaiety, but one senses immediately that this is one of Schnittke's "painted corpses." Sure enough, it morphs into the grotesque before its abrupt conclusion. Then we fall off of this bright plane into the melancholy Alegretto (8'38), which is explicitly Mahlerian in inspiration. Schnittke quotes Mahler's unfinished Piano Quartet of 1876, utilizing violin, viola, cello, and piano.

Now we tumble into the abyss, an abyss of sheer terror. Rumbles of low brass, strings and woodwinds menace. Eventually a fierce raging storm builds. This Lento/Allegro (12'27) ranks among the darkest, angriest movements in all of classical music. It is like Shostakovich-squared. In fact, if the second movement scherzo in Shostakovich's 10th Symphony is a portrait of Stalin (as some, not all, maintain), then it occurs to me that this far darker movement might be a portrait of the Demiurge, the evil, creator god believed to rule over the material world in the esoteric gnostic metaphysics, a system with which Schnittke was quite familiar. The final Lento (9'9) represents the tragic resignation which follows from this vision of evil, with no final triumph or redemption.

Clearly this is not the only possible interpretation of this work, but it seems to me that it fits perfectly, and that it is entirely plausible given what we know about Schnittke's preoccupations. Of course an easy psychological interpretation is that Schnittke is raging against his brush with death following his first stroke of 1985. His pre-stroke Symphony No. 4 is devout, and post-stroke Symphony No. 5 is shot through with terror. But Schnittke produced too much fine music between 1985 and his death in 1998 to attribute it all to his fear of death. I consider that an insult to a vital, creative mind. I prefer to think that Schnittke's music has something more cosmic to say about the human condition, something which might be an important insight into the power of evil and the prevalence of suffering in the world whether you accept gnostic beliefs or not.

Chailly and the RCO recorded Schnittke's 5th in February of 1990 for Decca. That recording is more refined, better balanced, with greater separation, than Jarvi's recording for BIS, which is much more raw, but also much more powerful. I'm sure there are many classical listeners who will prefer the Chailly for that reason. I can appreciate the refinement, but if you never hear this recording you will not fully understand the depths of terror within, so I will certainly continue to listen to both versions. This BIS disc includes the early "Pianissimo for large orchestra" (8'33 – 1967/68), which is an interesting avant-garde work which dates from before Schnittke's development of his postmodern polystylism. It is interesting, but not especially compelling. The Decca recording includes instead the Concerto Grosso No. 3, which leads well into the longer work.

bis.se INFO

Performers
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Neeme Järvi - conductor

Works on This Recording

1.
Symphony no 5 "Concerto Grosso no 4" by Alfred Schnittke
Conductor: Neeme Järvi
Orchestra/Ensemble: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1988; USSR
2.
Pianissimo by Alfred Schnittke
Conductor: Neeme Järvi
Orchestra/Ensemble: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1967/1968; USSR

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Göteborgs Symfoniker, Neeme Järvi / Concerto Grosso No. 4 - Symphony No. 5; Pianissimo

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