SCHNITTKE: "Sketches" Ballet Music [CD de audio] Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, Schnittke and Andrey Chistjakov

In 1978, Alfred Schnittke (1934-98) wrote the incidental music for a production of The Inspector's Tale, a stage adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls. It was intended to be directed by Yuri Lyubimov, but the Soviet government banned production. A suite was assembled from the score by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, and two prominent colleagues of Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Denisov, contributed a jointly composed march, which opens this CD. In 1985, the music was choreographed, the ballet, called Esquisses, was presented at the Bolshoi. Schnittke composed a number of new pieces for this production. The characters in the action are all Gogol's, but in addition to Dead Souls, we meet Tchitchikov, Major Kovalyov's Nose, and Ferdinand VIII from Notes of a Madman. A passage from the book is recited in his piece and read by the director of this CD. The music is poly-stylistic, with a huge orchestra (2 electric guitars, flexatone, prepared piano with coins inserted between the strings), quotes from Beethoven, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, all with a sense of diabolical mischief that ideally suits nature grotesqueness of many of Gogol's characters.