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finale to the tune and rhythm of the Mexican folk song, La Cucaracha (The Cockroach), which was popular in Russia following the 1957 International Youth Festival held in Moscow. The ‘pseudo-quotation’ from Shostakovich's Piano Trio mentioned by Schnittke can be found in the passacaglia opening of the third movement, which bears similarities to the passacaglia (also in the third movement) of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio 2, Op. 67. However, unlike Shostakovich, Schnittke bases his passacaglia on a combination of major triads and the JS Bach monogram: B(B flat)-A-C-H(B natural). The monogram is transposed up a major second and appears as: C-B-D-C sharp. This is the very first appearance of the BACH monogram in Schnittke’s music. It would later become a central element of his musical language, appearing in many other works, including both the Second and Third Violin Sonatas. Three Scenes Vladimir Jurowski conductor Allison Bell soprano London Philharmonic Orchestra
Schnittke often called his Three Scenes for soprano and ensemble (1980) ‘a short sketch for opera’. This is a work lasting only seventeen minutes; it represents an unusual combination of theatrical performance, in the form of ‘absurd’ drama, with music using an innovative sound palette. The performance looks almost like an Orthodox church funeral service, with a vibraphone in the centre, coffin-like, which four musicians play with double bass bows; the sounds are mystical and ghostly. Basic but evocative sound symbols are exploited: chorale, funeral march, polka, and song (the melody of which was borrowed from Schnittke’s music for the film The Feast during the Plague, (after Pushkin). The first scene represents a play between the visible and the invisible, and includes the symbolic sound of clocks apparently going backwards, first striking twelve midnight, then eleven and finally striking one, animating a strange figure, a singer who performs to the accompaniment of an old fashioned coffee grinder. Then the second scene begins. At its climax four players, like guards at the ‘coffin’, dance to vulgar, coarse music played offstage by a violin and double bass. Finally a conductor playing a big drum comes on stage, giving a signal to form a ‘funeral procession’ around the vibraphone. In the third scene all the participants leave the stage. The Three Scenes was staged by Yuri Lyubimov.
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Music to an Imagined Play Vladimir Jurowski conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra
Winter Road | Zapev | March Music to an Imagined Play was written for Yuri Lyubimov’s production of The Possessed (after Dostoevsky) in 1981. The novel (forbidden in the Soviet Union until the 1970s) is about the triumph of evil forces over early communist ideology in nineteenth-century Russia. The play was banned in Soviet Russia and was only seen in London – hence the title of the music. Schnittke himself said that this music was written for the ‘remainder’ or ‘survivors’ of the orchestra: indeed the combination of instruments seems very strange, almost random. The first movement, Winter Road, is inspired by the epigraph of the novel, taken from Pushkin’s poem: one can see the devils in the swirling mist of a winter road. The second movement, Zapev (introduction to a song), for solo flute only, is based on the bitter and melancholic intonations of Russian folk tunes. The third, March, is an illustration of the triumphant march of ‘communists’ in the final episode of The Possessed. 5.30pm | Purcell Room SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Concerto for Electric Instruments – Alexander Ivashkin conductor Mariano Nuñez West sound engineer and producer Lydia Kavina theremin Drosostalitsa Moraiti shumophone Andri Hadjiandreou crystadin Rebecca Wiles camerton piano Emma Firth, Hannah Cott, Magdalini Nikolaidou, Magdalena Kryzanowska ekvodins
Allegro moderato | Allegretto | Andante Schnittke used ‘electro-musical’ instruments with their typically artificial, exotic and alien sounds in his early orchestral piece Poem about Space, inspired by Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight in 1961. Electric musical instruments were quite popular in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s (and up to the early 1980s), both for classical and pop music. In 1960 Schnittke wrote his Concerto for Electric Instruments for the Orchestra of Electric Instruments led by Vyacheslav Meshcherin (1923-1995). The score, only recently discovered in Schnittke’s family archive, includes the electric (or camerton) piano, the crystadin, the termenvox or theremin, and the shumophone (noise-maker). The termenvox was invented in the1920s by the Soviet engineer Lev Theremin (1896-
1993) and was used by Charles Ives in the score of his Fourth Symphony in 1929, when Theremin lived and worked in the USA. Two solo instruments, the camerton piano and the crystadin, are accompanied by the theremin, shumophone and four ekvodins. This latter instrument, still available and in working condition at the Theremin Centre in Moscow, was a sort of electric organ with some of the features of a string instrument, such as a fingerboard, and with the possibility of playing vibrato. The ekvodin, one of the very first analogue synthesizers, was invented in 1937. In his concerto Schnittke uses four ekvodins like a string quartet. The next Russian synthesiser, ANS ( named after the composer Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin), was invented in 1938 and used by Schnittke for his only electro-acoustic piece, Stream (1969), which you can hear on a loop in the foyer today. It was not practicable to bring the original electric instruments from Moscow (in any case, many of them are not in working condition). For this performance we shall imitate the original timbres on synthesizers and keyboards, following the invaluable advice of Andrei Smirnov, Head of the Theremin Centre in Moscow. The theremin part will be played by Lev Theremin’s grand niece, Lydia Kavina. 6.15pm | Queen Elizabeth Hall SCHNITTKE (1934-1998) Monologue Alexander Zemtsov viola Vladimir Jurowski conductor Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra
Monologue for viola and string orchestra, composed for Yuri Bashmet in 1989, is a one-movement composition with a short slow introduction. It is a work typical of Schnittke’s late period, when the composer’s style had changed dramatically after his first stroke. His compositions became much more dissonant and linear, all quotations and classical or romantic allusions disappeared. The dynamic profile of Schnittke’s works after 1986 is often extreme. The tunes are ascetic, and the texture is bare. But the level of expression increases, and still relates to late romantic or expressionist style. One American critic compared Schnittke’s late compositions with Mahler’s music where ‘most of its musical flesh is torn away, leaving a gruesome skeleton dangling forlornly in a black space.’ As in many of Schnittke’s concertos, the soloist in Monologue confronts the orchestra in a fight with many of its own 22 November Events
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