"I, an expert in human passions,
Composed this collection of songs, where
every verse
Is full to the brim with black sorrow…."
So begins the text
of the second movement of Schnittke’s
remarkable Concerto for Choir.
The words, taken from the 10th
century Russian Book of Mournful
Songs is strikingly appropriate
for this darkest of composers. Whether
it’s black humour, as in (K)ein
Sommernachtstraum, or black despair,
as in the Viola Concerto, Schnittke’s
music often seems to occupy realms of
unrelieved Stygian gloom.
Yet the Concerto reveals
facets of Schnittke’s musical personality
that I hadn’t really encountered before.
For example, the music speaks of a profound
religious fervour, such that the composer
was reluctant to have it performed outside
of Russia for fear of misunderstanding.
There is a clear spiritual kinship with
the Vespers and Litanies of
Rachmaninov, another dweller in the
dark regions.
Thus this uniquely
named work has moments of wondrous luminosity,
particularly in its second and fourth
movements. The second, which has a hypnotic
slow lilt to it, even evokes the sensuality
of the Poulenc Gloria (closing
section), a most unlikely kinship. There
are many inspiring moments and many
memorable textures, and any worries
the composer may have had about Western
performers’ response to this music would
have been quickly dispelled by Tõnu
Kaljuste and the outstanding Swedish
Radio Choir. Their technical assurance
is so great that one can easily admire
their powerful identification with the
music, while Kaljuste clearly has a
superb ear for texture, balancing convincingly
Schnittke’s often densely complex choral
writing. The wordless Voices of Nature
is a short relatively simple work for
ten women’s voices and vibraphone. Its
coolness, however, makes a welcome foil
to the intensity of the Concerto.
Then follow three works
by Estonian Arvo Pärt, and many
listeners may experience some surprise
at the cheerful, almost humorous nature
of Dopo la Vittoria. The title
means After the Victory, the
text telling the story of how Ambrose,
Bishop of Milan in the 4th
century, composed the hymn Te Deum
and sang it with St. Augustine when
baptising him. It is a blithe work,
with a wonderfully solemn ‘Amen’ just
near the end, before the good-humoured
music returns to round the work off.
Bogoróditse
Djévo – Mother of God
and Virgin - is just fifty-seven
seconds long in this performance, and
is a delightful little choral ‘lollipop’,
with guitar-like strumming sounds in
the voices. And I am the true vine,
a setting of John 15, vv.1-14, is a
gentle, sensitive piece, again short
and straightforward, composed for the
900th anniversary of Norwich
Cathedral in 1996. The nature of these
pieces will be quite unexpected to listeners
acquainted with Pärt only through
such earnest, repetitive works as the
Passio or the Cantus in Memoriam
Benjamin Britten.
The cool, unassuming
nature of the Pärt pieces balances
extremely effectively the weightiness
of the emotions in the Schnittke Concerto,
making the disc much more enjoyable
and ‘digestible’ than it might otherwise
have been. A fine achievement, superbly
recorded by the BIS engineers under
Gunnar Andersson.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
Swedish Radio Choir/Tõnu Kaljuste 
