Delphian: Alfred Schnittke — Complete Piano Music, Simon Smith (2 CD)

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Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD
• Brand / Label: Delphian Records
• Composer: Alfred Schnittke
• Performer: Simon Smith (piano), with Richard Beauchamp and John Cameron (additional pianists)
• Catalog Number: DCD34131
• UPC: 801918341311
• Release Year: 2014
• Genre: Classical
• Style: 20th-century, contemporary classical, solo piano

Product Features

• Format: CD
• Discs: 2
• Total playing time: 2:26:29
• Recording: DDD, original 24-bit stereo
• Producers: Paul Baxter & Simon Smith; engineer Paul Baxter
• Made in the EU
• Condition: Factory Sealed (New)

Overview

This is the whole of Schnittke's published piano music on two discs — solo works plus the duet and six-hands pieces — played by Simon Smith. If you know Schnittke only from the film scores or the violin concertos, the piano music is where his "polystylism" shows its bones: Baroque counterpoint, twelve-tone rows and blunt tonal chords sit side by side, sometimes inside the same bar.

Smith doesn't soften any of it. The three sonatas anchor the set — the First runs over half an hour and is a genuinely demanding span — while the shorter pieces map the edges: the "Five Aphorisms," the wry "Homage to Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich," and the cadenzas Schnittke wrote for four Mozart concertos, which drag eighteenth-century material into the twentieth with deliberate friction.

The music makes huge technical demands, and Smith meets them with the kind of dynamic range the repertoire needs — International Record Review called him an astounding player. Delphian's 24-bit recording is close and detailed without glare. For collectors of modern Russian music, this is the reference single-artist survey of Schnittke at the keyboard.

Interesting Facts

• This two-disc set gathers Schnittke's entire published output for solo piano, plus a piano duet and a work for six hands at one keyboard.
• Schnittke (1934–1998) is best known for "polystylism," deliberately colliding Baroque, Classical, Romantic and modernist idioms within single works.
• Simon Smith made his Delphian debut in 2002 with the complete piano music of James MacMillan, paired with Stuart MacRae's Piano Sonata.
• The set includes Schnittke's cadenzas for four Mozart piano concertos (K39, K467, K491 and K503), bringing his modern voice into Classical-era frameworks.
• Smith is also a noted interpreter of Scottish composers, including Hafliði Hallgrímsson and Thomas Wilson, before turning to Schnittke here.
• The recordings were made in 24-bit stereo by Delphian Records of Edinburgh, with support from Creative Scotland.

Track Listing

Disc One 1–4. Piano Sonata No. 1 — 30:23 5–7. Piano Sonata No. 2 — 18:52 8–11. Piano Sonata No. 3 — 16:19

1. Variations — 11:11

Disc Two

1. Prelude and Fugue — 8:15
2. Improvisation and Fugue — 5:53
3. Variations on a Chord — 6:56 4–11. Little Piano Pieces — 10:04
4. Homage to Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich — 6:49 13–17. Five Aphorisms — 13:11
5. Sonatina for piano (four hands) — 3:02 19–24. Cadenzas to Mozart's Piano Concertos K39, K467, K491 and K503 — 15:26

Publishers

Released 2014 by Delphian Records Ltd, Edinburgh, UK. Produced by Paul Baxter and Simon Smith; recorded and mastered in 24-bit by Paul Baxter. Made in the EU.

Own this set? A quick review helps other Schnittke and modern-piano collectors.