Lebrecht Weekly | Pierre Boulez/Alfred Schnittke: Piano works

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Naxos
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BIS
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It’s a mark of how far Naxos have come under new ownership that a label which once churned out the complete waltzes of Johann Strauss now gives us piano works by the ultra-serious Pierre Boulez. Also under changed management, the Swedish label BIS continues its three-decade exploration of the Russian outcast, Alfred Schnittke. The results are mixed.

Two early Boulez piano works date from 1945 when he was in his second college year are consistently curious, if not at all radical. Theme and Variations for the Left Hand, though technically serial, is both playful and easily playable. Boulez’s teacher at the time was Mrs Arthur Honegger. He then moved up to Olivier Messiaen’s class, which accounts for Trois Psalmodies, contemplative and a tad quaint. Half a century later, in 1994, Boulez returned to the piano with Incises, a rush of tinkling runs that, had I not known it was Boulez, I might have mistaken for a Tom Lehrer parody of Euro-modernism. The pianist is a Dutchman, Ralph van Raat.

The Schnittke album, played by Nicholas Stavy, is a disappointment. It lacks any of the composer’s trademark satire that he aimed at the wobbly jowls of Soviet bureaucracy. The largest piece here is a 1990 second sonata, intended for Schnittke’s wife Irina. Schnittke said: ‘I am not a pianist myself… I have no relationship with the keyboard.’ Funny how quickly you can hear that.