Cappella Amsterdam / Daniel Reuss (dir)
Pentatone PTC5187028 [40:39]
★★★★★

Employing anonymous 16th-century texts concerned with guilt and repentance, Schnittke’s remarkable Psalms of Repentance was composed in 1988 in the wake of Gorbachev’s reforms that instigated sweeping political and cultural changes in the Soviet Union. Psalms of Repentance was written in this changing climate and is a deeply personal piece from Schnittke in which the Orthodox tradition meets the composer’s often bleak, late musical language. Daniel Reuss and his excellent Dutch forces have jettisoned the published version of the work – the conductor considers it unreliable – in favour of the composer’s manuscript version and its many differences. It’s an enterprising decision, fiercely matched by the penetrating reading of the emotional and expressive 40-minute sequence, faultlessly delivered by Cappella Amsterdam. The disc’s relative brevity is fully justified: what could preface or follow such music?