Schnittke: Piano Music, Volume 1

Featuring

Nicolas Stavy
Alfred Schnittke

Did you know?

1/7

Composition History

Alfred Schnittke's Little Piano Pieces (1971) were written for his six-year-old son, Andrei, who premiered six of the eight pieces in 1971.

Compositional Technique

The Prelude and Fugue (1963) by Alfred Schnittke uses twelve-tone material from two earlier works: his Quartet (1958-59) and the opera Das elfte Gebot (The Eleventh Commandment).

Composer's Artistic Vision

Alfred Schnittke admitted that the piano was not his favorite instrument, and he wrote relatively little music for it compared to his output for strings.

Composition History

Alfred Schnittke's Second Piano Sonata (1990) is dedicated to his wife, Irina, who also premiered the work in Lübeck in 1991.

Composer Biography

Alfred Schnittke's piano works on this album span from the 1950s, his "years of obscurity," to the 1990s, a period marked by both world fame and serious illness.

Compositional Technique

Alfred Schnittke's Five Preludes and Fugue (1953-54) is seen as a forerunner of his polystylistics, incorporating diverse stylistic elements from composers like Schumann, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Chopin.

Composer Biography

Alfred Schnittke began piano lessons relatively late, at age 15, and was largely self-taught in exploring the Soviet avant-garde and New Music trends like serialism and collage technique.