Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Frank Strobel - Schnittke: Film Music Vol. II (2006) [SACD]

This, the second volume of the film music of Alfred Schnittke, brings us music from four very different sounding, but equally fascinating, scores.

Clowns and Kinder is truly circus music reminiscent of Rota’s music for Fellini’s La Strada, very catchy, but with a harder, more ironic edge. It features a very jazzy section entitled ‘Acrobats’ and concludes with a haunting waltz.

This leads nicely into the music from ‘The Waltz’ a TV film made by Viktor Titov in 1969. It begins with a carefree, graceful and melodic section (bizarrely entitled The Building Site) and moves into a percussion statement of the same music, at which point Schnittke introduces a waltz by Johann Strauss (it is in fact Tales from the Vienna Woods, although the notes accompanying the disc do not tell us this). Gradually this waltz becomes distorted and transformed in a manner often used by Schnittke in his symphonic works.

The music for The Glass Harmonica, a surrealist animated cartoon by Andrei Khrzhanovsky, is played in full (20min.) and features such exotic instruments as an Ekvodin (early Russian synthesiser), an Ionika (electric organ) and a theremin. After an eerie baroque-sounding melody Schnittke gives full reign to his imagination. To quote the notes ‘Whining violins, giggling woodwinds, roaring brass and rattling percussion create a ghostly atmosphere. Symphonic dimensions open up and are soon torn to pieces again, slashed, unravelled.’ Exactly!
Altogether this is an astounding if somewhat unsettling score and makes one eager to see the film that it was written to accompany.

Finally a short suite from ‘The Ascent’, a 1976 film set in WW2. The opening movement ‘Sotnikov’s Death’ begins quietly in the depths of the orchestra with dense textures, akin to the start of Shostakovich’s 2nd Symphony and gradually builds to a huge climax with bells and crashing tam-tams. It will certainly test your system to the full.

As on the previous Volume, both the playing of the Berlin RSO and the recording are outstanding. The multi-channel sound is natural, vivid and benefits from the generous acoustic of the Jesus-Christus Kirche in Berlin.

Since Schnittke wrote over 60 film scores, it is to be hoped that Frank Strobel will give us a further volume in this excellent series.