Alfred Schnittke’s Cello Concerto No.2, and me.

The Second Cello Concerto by Alfred Schnittke was composed near the end of his life, in 1990. It consists of 5 movements and lasts around 45 minutes.

I was captivated by how difficult the music was for me as a listener. I could choose: brush it aside and choose a different piece of music to listen to, or keep on listening again and again and look for any connections between me and it.

Perhaps it was that particular time in my life that made me choose the second option. I wasn’t completely happy with my existence in a world I found to be full of horrors and injustice to humans and animals alike. Listening to this music was somehow therapeutic; Schnittke was expressing it all, and I could use that as an internal outlet for whatever it was that I was struggling with myself.

Alfred Schnittke

(1934-1998)

He said of himself

Although I don’t have any Russian blood, I am tied to Russia, having spent all my life there. On the other hand, much of what I’ve written is somehow related to German music and to the logic that comes out of being German, although I did not particularly want this… Like my German forebears, I live in Russia, I can speak and write Russian far better than German. But I am not Russian… My Jewish half gives me no peace: I know none of the Jewish languages, but I look like a typical Jew.

Alexander Ivashkin, Schnittke’s biographer, comments on this statement by saying that

One may certainly detect the influence of German culture, German forms, and German logic. But, at the same time, he virtually destroys the symphonic tradition by revealing its erosion. In this respect, he is more the irrational Russian “destroyer” than the precise German craftsman.

It was this “destroyer” quality that spoke to me so deeply at the time. Especially the last movement of the concerto where a beautiful theme in a passacaglia form is gradually ‘destroyed’ by both orchestra and soloist. The music put me in a therapeutic contact with the aspects of myself that were struggling with accepting the destruction of beauty in the world I was seeing.

(with words from Ivashkin's interviews with Schnittke.)

I was fortunate to meet Alexander Ivashkin and receive a cello lesson from him where I played parts of the concerto. It was in 2012 at Goldsmith’s University in London, as I was finishing my degree at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. I honestly was not aware of the significance of this cello lesson. Ivashkin was one of only 3 cellists who have made a recording of the concerto so far, and he had also had a personal connection with Schnittke himself. 2 years later, Ivashkin died. I didn’t even think of the possibility of recording the lesson since I didn’t have a habit of recording anything at all at the time. My memories of the lesson are embarrassingly vague. I was sitting on a podium. Ivashkin had a handwritten copy of the cello part. That’s pretty much all I can remember. My only regret in life is that I didn’t have that lesson recorded.

Ivashkin made a recording of the concerto with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Polyanski, released in 1999. To my ears, his interpretation is the most ‘expressive’ compared to the other two solo cellists who have recorded the concerto. It’s very touching for me to listen to, as it really sounds like an enormous amount of work went in to the process of rendering such a challenging piece with so much presence and care. So much love.

However, the recording I preferred listening to the most was the 1992-recording by Torleif Thedéen, with Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lev Markiz. Thedéen’s playing was for me extra impactful through a rather macho approach to the music. Ivashkin’s more feminine expression seemed to me to convey suffering, lament, and to be a victim of cruel circumstances. Thedéen’s masculine rendition takes the negative air of the surroundings, embodies it and turns it into something immensely powerful, more of a journey through hell with a victorious homecoming than a surrender to all that is difficult in life. The entire 45-min piece ends with an incredibly eerie, drawn-out come-down after a huge climax. This ending -a long, quiet clusterchord- can both invoke a feeling of defeat, and a feeling of the start of a new chapter. Or is that just me?

(The first cellist to record the concerto was Mstislav Rostropovich, the dedicatee of the work. It was with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa in 1991. I find it hard to relate to this performance so I won’t try to write anything about it.)

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I reached adulthood in a time when ‘climate change’ became ok to write publicly, vegans were shedding light on the horrific circumstances of our domesticated animals, I lost my christian faith, there was talk about the possibility of civilizational collapse, and the fear of nuclear war returned. Growing up as a human being has for me been -and still is- a seemingly never-ending awakening to one absurdity after the other. Therefore, my personal experience of relating to Schnittke’s music in general, and his cello music in particular, is naturally an opportunity to enter the darkness that has been accumulating in me, and to actually work on it. By facing it, change can find its place and a new window can open.

To listen to music is a highly personal experience as each one of us have our own unique sets of associations to what we hear. ‘The 5 stages of grief’, a theory developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross initially in 1969, is something that I can hear in Schnittke’s second cello concerto:

Denial - I have no right to think of my privileged place in the world as anything but positive; I have food, I have shelter, and the freedom to do what I want with my life. How can I feel anything but happy?

Anger - why is there so much cruelty in the world, so much pain, why can’t we just live in peace with each other? Why, why, why?

Bargaining - if I practice letting go of bad thoughts, I can be happy; if I just ignore the news, I can be happy; if I buy ‘fairtrade’ products, there will be more happiness, etc.

Depression - evil is abundant. My actions don’t matter.

Acceptance - yes, there is evil in the world. Then, what? What’s actually in my power to do something about?

These don’t necessarily come in this order. The opening movement of the concerto can on one day be an expression of anger, the next day it can be an expression of denial, and on another day of acceptance. The second movement is for me a long bargaining process, or a mean caricature of denial, interspersed with outbursts of anger. The third is the depression and acceptance, with a perhaps surprising return of the bargaining leading into the fourth movement which is very angry. The fifth is quite a journey within acceptance, where something ‘positive’ and something ‘negative’ unite, concluding with that cluster-chord. Again, this is my personal experience.

Another aspect of my experience with this concerto has to do with a kind of energetic balance in myself. I am soft-spoken, on the introverted side, happily quiet in social gatherings, and I find it very challenging to scream and express myself in dramatic ways. However, on the cello I can easily ‘scream’ and take up as much audible space as possible. The large amount of dissonances and hysterical motifs in the concerto is rather satisfying to give voice to, as a contrast to my soft persona. It’s yin-yang.

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I’m forever grateful to my teacher in Manchester, Nicholas Jones, who encouraged me to learn the concerto. Not all teachers would have approved of their Bachelor’s student wanting to dig into a 45-minute piece of atonal music that is hardly ever performed anywhere.

I’m writing this in an attempt to find others who are actually playing this piece. So far I haven’t come across a single person (except from Alexander Ivashkin) who have studied the solo cello part, and I’m so curious about whether there are more of us in the world. As far as I know, there’s only the score published by Sikorski, which has several misprints. I kindly received a scan of the original manuscript from the Schnittke Archives in London, and I made a series of YouTube videos where I compare the original to the Sikorski.

Quotes from ‘A Schnittke Reader’, edited by Alexander Ivashkin, Indiana University Press, 2002.
Image source (photo of Alfred Schnittke): BR Klassik