Alfred Schnittke - Choir Concerto No. 1 - O Master of All Living (1984-85)

Concerto for Mixed Chorus [Choir Concerto] (1984-1985) - I. О Повелитель сущего всего [O Master of All Living]
Composer: Alfred Schnittke (1934 - 1998)
Performers: Russian State Symphonic Cappella, dir. Valery Polyansky
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"Alfred Garrievich Schnittke was a Soviet and German composer.

Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich, but after the visit of the Italian composer Luigi Nono to the USSR, he took up the serial technique in works such as Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1964). However, Schnittke soon became dissatisfied with what he termed the "puberty rites of serial self-denial." He created a new style which has been called "polystylism", where he juxtaposed and combined music of various styles past and present. He once wrote, "The goal of my life is to unify serious music and light music, even if I break my neck in doing so." His first concert work to use the polystylistic technique was the second violin sonata, Quasi una sonata (1967–1968).

In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad, thanks in part to the work of émigré Soviet artists such as the violinists Gidon Kremer and Mark Lubotsky. Despite constant illness, he produced a large amount of music, including important works such as the Second (1980) and Third (1983) String Quartets and the String Trio (1985); the Faust Cantata (1983), which he later incorporated in his opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten; the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987); the Third (1981), Fourth (1984) and Fifth (1988) Symphonies (the last of which is also known as the Fourth Concerto Grosso) and the Viola (1985) and First Cello (1985–1986) concertos. This period was also marked by a turn in Schnittke and his music to Christian themes, exemplified in his deeply spiritual unaccompanied choral works, the Concerto for Mixed Chorus (1984-1985) and the Penitential Psalms (1988), and alluded to in various others works, including the Fourth Symphony and the Faust Cantata.

As his health deteriorated from the late 1980s, Schnittke started to abandon much of the extroversion of his earlier polystylism and retreated into a more withdrawn, bleak style, quite accessible to the lay listener."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Schnittke
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