Schnittke: Piano Quintet

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Just as Schnittke's First Symphony picks up the threads from Shostakovich's last, so his Piano Quintet feels like the natural successor to Shostakovich's last string quartet; that makes ECM's... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Release Date: 22nd Mar 2003
Catalogue No: 4618152
Label: ECM
Series: New Series
Length: 64 minutes

Schnittke: Piano Quintet, Op. 108

Work length27:54

$5.50

$7.50

Alexei Lubimov (piano), Andras Keller (violin), Janos Pilz (violin), Zoltan Gal (viola), Judit Szabó (cello)
Keller Quartet
Recorded: 2003
Recording Venue: Radio Studio DRS, Zürich

1. Moderato

Track length6:49

$1.10

$1.50

2. In tempo di valse

Track length5:31

$1.10

$1.50

3. Andante

Track length6:09

$1.10

$1.50

4. Lento

Track length4:54

$1.10

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5. Moderato pastorale

Track length4:31

$1.10

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Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 15 In E Flat Minor, Op. 144

Work length36:53

$6.60

$9.00

Andras Keller (violin), Janos Pilz (violin), Zoltan Gal (viola), Judit Szabó (cello)
Keller Quartet
Recorded: 2003
Recording Venue: Propstei St. Gerold

1. Elegy

Track length11:47

$1.10

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2. Serenade

Track length6:18

$1.10

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3. Intermezzo

Track length1:48

$1.10

$1.50

4. Nocturne

Track length5:04

$1.10

$1.50

5. Funeral March

Track length5:04

$1.10

$1.50

6. Epilogue

Track length6:52

$1.10

$1.50

Reviews
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Reviews

2010

Just as Schnittke's First Symphony picks up the threads from Shostakovich's last, so his Piano Quintet feels like the natural successor to Shostakovich's last string quartet; that makes ECM's coupling of the two chamber works an effective and thought-provoking one, the more so since both performances are of the highest quality.
This music is a good deal harder to bring off than it looks. The textures are emaciated, and the pain of emotional starvation needs to register with unremitting intensity. In Schnittke's solo piano opening, Alexei Lubimov shows the requisite temperament and control of sonority, and both he and the Kellers keep us inside the Quintet's world through the first movement's obsessive, quartertone- inflected bell-tolling, through the ghosttrain- ride of the film-derived Tempo di valse, through the catatonic laments of the two succeed- ing slow movements, all the way to the anxious transfigurations of the finale.
Curiously, Lubimov goes against the score in the final phrase, where Schnittke asks for pitched notes to fade into the noise of fingertips tapping on the keys, echoing the pedal-knocking at the end of the first movement. But his carefully graded diminuendo is effective enough in its own way.
Single-disc versions of Shostakovich's valedictory quartet are surprisingly thin on the ground.
Here, too, the Kellers can stand comparison with the very finest. Shostakovich's parched and starved textures can be made to sound even more discomforting, but the Kellers' tonal control brings out its own range of nuance. Recording quality is nicely judged, the players being set in a nicely unobtrusive perspective.

Schnittke: Piano Quintet

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