Schnittke's Second Violin Concerto opens with the kind of jagged, convulsive, Webern-crossed-with-Shostakovich cadenza that is a trademark of his string writing. On his Melodiya/Eurodisc LP recording (not reissued on CD), the concerto's dedicatee Mark Lubotsky made it impressive enough but Gidon Kremer is even more precise and even more intense almost as though the instrument were strung with barbed wire.
Does the rest of the concerto live up to this opening? And what is all the curious writing for the solo double bass supposed to mean? Jurgen Kochel's accompanying note reveals all or at least something startling. It turns out that the structure is based on Christ's life, death and resurrection, and that the double bass is a Judas figure an anti-soloist (shades of Liszt's Faust/Mephistopheles perhaps). That may or may not affect one's reactions to the music. Do Berg's Violin Concerto and Chamber Concerto, for instance, stand by their hidden programmes or by the notes composed as a result of them? Certainly the notes Schnittke composed have never drawn me back to his Second Violin Concerto in the way I have felt drawn back to, say, his Fourth.
And the Third Concerto is certainly not a piece to be trifled with. Its unusual scoring for 13 winds and four strings is partly modelled on Berg's Chamber Concerto, and at one stage the composer was toying with another Biblical subtitle, The Song of Songs. But the musical invention seems to me more self-sufficient, more concentrated and more finished than that of the Second Concerto. The violin's trills convey the alarm of a whole psychic world tottering, and all three movements have their nerve-endings exposed. The Mahlerian chorale of the finale carries bittersweetness to the nth degree.
Throughout the disc Kremer's personality is a compelling presence, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe are terrific in their support. Eschenbach's contribution is perhaps less overt but certainly no less vital, and in the two contrasted miniatures (in many ways the outstanding compositions in the programme) his discretion is the ideal foil for his charismatic partner. Recording quality is of the very finest.'