Customer Reviews

Schnittke: Concerto Grosso I/Pärt: Tabula Rasa/Görecki: Concerto

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This disc of Schnittke, Part, and Gorecki is surprisingly good. I got it mainly to have 'Tabula Rasa' in a congenial setting, and that is just what I received. The most challenging and ambitious work on the disc is Schnittke's 'Concerto Grosso #1'. It summarizes western music in an intriguing and entertaining way. As it finishes, 'Tabula Rasa' almost seems to be another part of that work. Only gradually do you notice that the atmosphere has grown serene. After the Part piece fades into silence, Gorecki puts the cap on the program with his curious little 'Concerto For Harpsichord and Strings'. At 8 min. it is the shortest work (each of the others is nearly 1/2 hr.). Each of its 2 movements, which are essentially fast and faster, is 4 min. In the first, the harpsichord plays a fast, gradually mutating toccata, while the strings play a slower, minor-key, gradually mutating melody line over it. The movement suddenly ends with a major chord. The next movement is in a relentless marcatissimo rhythm, which at first seems like an accompaniment to a silent comedy, then like a Bernard Hermann/Hitchcock score, then like a Shostakovich race to the finish, closed off with a baroque flourish. Turovsky's group does a fine job all around, and the recording is very good. What's not to like?

It's pretty funny that the writer of the liner notes for this disc works so hard to equate the projects of Gorecki, Part, and Schnittke. Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No.1 was a major event in modern music, a breakthrough from a great composer. Schnittke's post-modernism, or polystylism, is not just a gimmick. He puts the music of the past and present to use for conveying a profound, if anguished, vision of life. The Gorecki Harpsichord Concerto is a nothing, practically--short and uninteresting. The Part, well--it's slow, tonal, mystical. Really not very compelling as music, but for some perhaps an aid to meditation. Gorecki and Part are both worlds apart from Schnittke, though. Not that I wouldn't recommend this disc--you get a major work combined with two works that at least have a historical value (as examples of the strange popularity of minimalism).