Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998)
– Suite from the music for the film “Crew”
– “Pushkin Suite”
– “Silhouettes” based on “Petersburg Tales” by N.Gogol
– “Revision Tale”
XXXIX Festival of Music “Minsk Spring – 2024”
International evenings of piano duets “DUETTISSIMO”
Concert cycle “PORTRAITS”
concert five
“ALFRED SCHNITTKE” (on the 90th anniversary of his birth)
Piano duet Natalya Gromova and Valery Borovikov
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Alfred Schnittke... For the general public, this name is a symbol of the Russian musical avant-garde. No other USSR composer of this generation (he was born in 1934) received such wide fame as he did.
It was banned, performed extremely rarely, and if performed, the concerts were accompanied by unprecedented excitement (up to the intervention of mounted police). Later, it was the other way around: they started playing him a lot, they started making films and writing books about him. Schnittke became a symbol of perestroika and freedom of conscience. He was not an ideological dissident, but he was a nonconformist and a very significant and deep personality.
Rostropovich called Schnittke a genius, Sviridov was skeptical about his talent. The excitement around his name during the perestroika years and the decline in interest after his death make it impossible to accurately determine his place in the composer hierarchy of the 20th century. It is the matter of time. Whether he will stand on a par with Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich is a big question, but it is absolutely clear that without him the picture of the music of our time will be incomplete.
Schnittke had to write a lot for cinema and theater. This is how he earned his living for many years, since his major works were not recommended for performance by the Union of Composers. And Schnittke received his first State Prize of the RSFSR not for his symphonies, oratorios and concerts, but specifically for music for cartoons.
At the concert on April 25, dedicated to the composer’s 90th birthday, you will hear Alfred Schnittke’s music for plays and films performed by the piano duet of Natalia Gromova and Valery Borovikov.
