Alfred Schnittke
Once again this year, the Music Festival has a special focus on a composer with Hamburg connections: Alfred Schnittke. From the Piano Sonata to the great Cantata, the programme features exciting works by the German-Russian composer who taught here.
Once again this year, the Music Festival has a special focus on a fascinating composer with Hamburg connections: Alfred Schnittke. In 1990, the German-Russian composer migrated to the Hanseatic city and took up a position as Professor of Composition at the local university of music. By this time he had already long become a leading international figure in New Music, famous for his polystylistic approach in which he combined a variety of temporal and stylistic levels. The first spotlight concert with the Karol Szymanowski Quartet and the pianist Michail Lifits explores the relationship between Schnittke and Gustav Mahler.
That Schnittke often paid homage to the old masters is shown not only by the »Suite im alten Stil« in the same concert, but also his six concerti grossi based on Baroque formal models, the first of which the Academy of St Martin in the Fields now performs. Acclaimed for his versatility and sublime playing, pianist Alexander Melnikov then places Schnittke into the context of Soviet-Russian music, while the Symphoniker Hamburg present the popular Faust cantata »Seid nüchtern und wachet«, one of the composer’s great vocal-symphonic works.
