Capriccio is not the only company to have had the idea of recording Schnittke’s film music. But with upwards of 60 scores to choose from, there is plenty to go round, and this side of his work is clearly indispensable to a 360-degree view of his personality and achievement. Not that the music was ever intended to stand up independently of the films themselves. But it certainly has some striking moments, and when carefully selected into suites, performed with dedication, and with the film side properly documented, it can be rewarding as well as instructive.

I would have traded something of the Capriccio booklet’s gushy enthusiasm for more hard information about the films and their content. But otherwise this CD is entirely recommendable. The most interesting score is surely that for Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s 1968 cartoon The Glass Harmonica – an innovative film in that it consists largely of visual “quotations” (a collage of art and architecture from different eras) – which Schnittke complements with a set of variations on the B-A-C-H motif, closely associated with his violin-and-piano work Quasi una sonata. A close runner-up is The Ascent, to Larissa Shepitko’s 1976 psychological-heroic film, where Schnittke once again lays bare his extremely simple but effective, Polish-derived illustrative modernisms. Clowns and Children and The Waltz are in lighter, more conventional vein, but that’s no bad thing for the balance of styles on this finely played and recorded disc.