A rival version of Schnittke's First Cello Concerto is not entirely unexpected, given the obviously (for some tastes all too obviously) effective writing for the soloist—hear from 8'20'' on track 2 of the new recording for a typical example of its ascents to the rosiny regions of the A string. I won't recapitulate the comments I made last July in my review of the Thedeen/BIS recording, except to say that I retain the impression of a rather ordinary work which comes to extraordinary life in its heart-on-sleeve finale, bursting into celestial choirs with reverberation, bells and major triads in a manner which only a staggering combination of agonized passion and naivety manages to bring off. It is like George Crumb at his most sentimental, with a redeeming edge of naked suffering. Maria Kliegel's performance is almost as unrestrainedly intense and commanding as Thorleif Thedeen's, the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony Orchestra are a match for their Danish counterparts, and the Marco Polo recording is superior in clarity and impact to that of BIS.
Stille Musik is a more restrained, but very minor piece for violin and cello dating from 1979. From the previous year comes the Sonata for cello and piano, a work which answers the prayers of any cellist who has dreamed of crossing Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto with Bruch's Kol nidrei. Its three movements are progressively longer and progressively less interesting, even in a performance as full-blooded and well recorded as this one.'