City Celebrates Un-Soviet Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke, an ethnic German born in Russia, was well-known in the West, but he was never formally honored in the land of his birth. The composer, whose post-modern works were marginalized by the Soviet government, was forced to spend his career writing background music for films and theatrical productions.


Today, a year after his death, Russia makes its apology for the past with the Alfred Schnittke Music Festival, which runs from Nov. 15 to 24 at the Moscow Conservatory.


"You cannot really say that Schnittke's music was banned by Soviet officials," said Alla Bogdanova, technical director of Moscow's Schnittke Center.


"There was a very delicate politic. Some of Schnittke's works were performed in small public places. Sometimes there were concerts."


The existence of such rare concerts, usually held in tiny halls closed to public, allowed the Soviet government to maintain that Schnittke was, in fact, not banned at all.


Despite the West's interest and the machinations of the Soviet government, Schnittke, according to Bogdanova, wasn't an ordinary dissident.


"He wasn't against the system," she said. "He only wanted to express his point of view and to dispute the accepted principals of musical evolution, which were officially unacceptable according to the Soviet aesthetic."


Schnittke, who often used "samples," or fragments of other compositions, in his work, was the author of pieces which, to the lover of classical music, might sound something like hip hop. Soviet officials said that the Soviet people found it impossible to understand.


The people of contemporary Russia, however, have no such limitations, apparently, and organizers expect the festival to be quite successful. Even Schnittke's widow, pianist Irina Schnittke, will take part. Organized by Russia's Schnittke Institute of Music and the German Embassy (Schnittke spent the last years of his life in Hamburg), the festival will honor the composer with a lengthy program of choral music and musical scores for ballet written by Schnittke and other composers of the same genre - among them, Sofia Gubaidullina, Vyacheslav Artyemov and Edison Denisov.


Festival organizers have attempted to provide some variety to the classic Conservatory scene with film screenings and a performance of excerpts from plays set to music written by Schnittke especially for the Taganka Theater.


Yury Lyubimov, artistic director at the Taganka Theater, began collaborating with Schnittke decades ago, during the Brezhnev era. For Schnittke, for whom paying work was a rarity, the work was a blessing. Together, the two produced a number of musical scores, many of which are now well-known. "That much of the music Schnittke wrote for our theater became popular all over the world makes perfect sense," Lyubimov said.


Music Schnittke wrote to accompany "Revision Tale," a play based on Nikolai Gogol's "The Inspector," was one such score. Rewritten as a ballet, it has since become famous as "The Gogol Suite."


Later, Lyubimov lost his Soviet citizenship and was forced into exile, but the two continued to work together. Collaboration, however, was not easy. Lyubimov, who was not allowed to return to Russia, sent recordings between his residence in London to Schnittke in Russia with visiting friends.


"Schnittke could work in any genre," Lyubimov said. "Symphony, comedy, the grotesque. In his real life, Schnittke was a very tactful and woundable man. On the other hand, however, he was also ironic and even sarcastic."


Because he considered himself an artist and not a politician, Schnittke refused the Soviet Union's highest honor, the Lenin Prize, when it was offered him.


Boris Pokrovsky, who co-directed the opera "Life with an Idiot," for which Schnittke wrote the score, said of the composer's place in music history: "He arrived by train to his own special station and took his place there. We don't even know that station's address, yet."


Concerts will be held at the Great Hall of the Conservatory, located at 13 Bolshaya Nikitskaya, on Nov. 19 and 21 at 7 p.m. Metro Pushkinskaya. Tel. 229-9401.


The Taganka Theater program begins at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 21. The theater is located on Taganskaya Ploshchad, across the street from the ring line exit. Metro Taganskaya. Tel. 915-1015.