Schnittke’s Fourth is his ecumenical symphony. Its material is abstracted from Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Jewish chant and is used in ways which seem to stand for co-ordination and coexistence rather than contrast. At the same time his own Catholic faith supplies the underlying concept, in that the large-scale structure reflects the ‘three times’ five episodes from the life of Mary.
Like all composers Schnittke insists that we should experience the music through notes rather than words about notes. In my review of the BIS recording, I wrote that that experience left a slightly unsatisfying impression of schematicism, of filling-in a predetermined space with insufficient structural tension for a 40-minute span. That impression remains. Still, there are good reasons for investigating this new issue, for as a performance it definitely has the edge. Not that Okko Kamu’s Stockholmers fall significantly short, but Polyansky’s keyboard soloists are more acutely responsive to melodic shades, and his countertenor is more freakishly intense, so that his own slightly broader tempos are filled with more expectation and atmosphere. Chandos’s marginally richer, more reverberant acoustic is also a plus, as is Ronald Weitzman’s detailed booklet-note. Apparently it was always Schnittke’s intention that the choral coda should be sung to the Latin text of the Ave Maria, but in the pre-perestroika Soviet Union he was unable to reveal this intention. Why that was so is something of a mystery to me, however, given that other Soviet composers, and indeed Schnittke himself in his Second Symphony, had already set religious texts.
The Ave Maria is also the text for the first of the Three Sacred Hymns of 1983, luminously beautiful settings wonderfully sung by Polyansky’s choir (though the intonation on the final chord sounds odd to my ears). The BIS coupling is the more substantial Requiem, and followers of Schnittke’s work will presumably want both discs. If choice has to be made for the symphony alone, however, I would go strongly with the new Chandos version.'