The dissonant oboe suspensions at the start of Bach's St John Passion have a sharp, potent sting here, compelling you to sit up and listen with unusual attentiveness. Released in time for Easter, ...

A great composer of the 20th century left us with one final artistic testament: Rest in Fortississimo... Deafening slience? A silent roar? Alfred Schnittke was a Soviet-German composer, who is known ...

Alfred Schnittke started out by making the whole of musical history his own frenetic stamping ground, earnest in jest and deadly serious even at his most sarcastic. He was no different from countless ...

Between Two Worlds, a two week festival of the works of Alfred Schnittke (1934-89), has been an opportunity to experience what a wonderfully entertaining composer he was. Artistically-directed by ...

It takes a special kind of performer to play the music of Alfred Schnittke persuasively — to give his style the acerbic stringency it is due while still bringing out the mournful expressivity that ...

This fine new release from the young violist David Aaron Carpenter (who returns to San Francisco for a solo recital in January) offers more than just performances of two of the great string concertos ...

On a visit to Moscow to see his grandparents in 1941, 6-year-old Alfred Schnittke registered at a music school but never did receive an education there. War broke out in June of that year, when ...

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Some composers get a word or phrase attached to them and it sticks like mud. For the German-Russian Alfred Schnittke (died 1998) it’s “polystylism”, descriptive of a magpie approach that borrows from ...

A DIRE need for better housing shaped Alfred Schnittke's marvellous music. He and his wife Irina were sharing a flat in Moscow with her parents when their son, Andrei, was born in February 1965. It ...