Symphony No 9
Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No 9 (1997), in three movements deciphered by Alexander Raskatov. Recorded live in 2009 by Hamburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei
Boreyko. With the kind permission of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra (Hamburger Sinfoniker).
1st movement (opens in a new browser window)
2nd movement (opens in a new browser window)
3rd movement (opens in a new browser window)
In July 1994 Schnittke suffered a stroke which left him unable to speak for his last four years. He was still writing music, using his left hand, and completed his Symphony No. 9, a new Viola Concerto and the Variations for String Quartet before he died in Hamburg on 3rd August 1998.
The Ninth Symphony was finished in 1997. Because Schnittke had written it with his left hand, the original score was very difficult to read. Gennady Rozhdestvensky therefore offered his help in ‘deciphering’ the score. He completed this task in a few months, and in his version the Symphony No. 9 was premièred in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on 19th June 1998.
After the composer’s death it was decided to find a composer who would be able to decipher Schnittke’s score without making too extensive changes to it. The Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndorf (1947–2001) began the task with great energy and determination, comparing the original score with many other manuscripts by Schnittke, in order to find the best possible solutions.
Unfortunately Korndorf was unable to finish his work, as he died in 2001. Alexander Raskatov (b. 1953) then agreed to continue the deciphering process, taking several years to complete a version of the symphony. Finally, Schnittke’s Symphony No. 9 in Alexander Raskatov’s version was premièred in Dresden on 16th June 2007 with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davis.
Schnittke’s Ninth Symphony is an extraordinary exploration of new resources in music. Passionately interested in the discoveries made by Josef Matthias Hauer, Luigi Nono, Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov, Schnittke was searching for a new musical language – one that was not necessarily related to stylistic diversity, but rather to the ‘even tension’ (Schnittke's own expression) of the tonal fabric itself.
Ascetic, but enormously ‘energetic’ and highly expressive, Symphony No. 9 shows the direction in which Alfred Schnittke was heading in his last years, purifying his music and opening it up to new dimensions.