Alfred Schnittke's Third String Quartet, one of his most absorbing works, is a meditation on how a composer of today can cope with his musical past. Taking a fragment of Lassus, a gesture from Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and Shostakovich's DSCH motto as starting points, he investigates their syntax in relation to each composer's language and to his own. He comes to no revelatory conclusions, nor could he have done: it would be both restrictive and contradictory to systematize a recognition that musical discourse is far richer than any system or 'ism' can allow. But the argument is no cold essay in musical linguistics: it is discussed intently, with both passion and irony.
Top marks to the Britten Quartet for shrewdness of programming, about one out of ten to the Kronos. To have the work that prompted Schnittke's investigation as coupling (and to have all of it, not just the Grosse Fuge to which he returns obsessively) both adds to its fascination and sends one back to contemplate Beethoven's modernity. However, to imbed the Schnittke, as the Kronos do, in a sequence of much slighter pieces (saving the presence of the Barber—beautifully done—and of Webern's elusive miniatures) does it no service at all, except to enhance its stature by contrast. Some contrast! John Zorn's Forbidden fruit is a piece of designer trendiness, a rather bad quasi-erotic poem (in Japanese) set to a coolly random collage of musical quotations and exclamatory gestures. Terry Riley contributes a characteristic stretch of spikily eventful post-minimalism, veers towards Tippett in rhythm and towards Bartok in melody, but runs out of steam long before his eight minutes are up. The Sallinen is a slight miniature, a sort of secular carol; its inclusion is puzzling (the Quartet play only a minor part in its performance). John Lurie's blues-y sketch and Astor Piazolla's tango-plus-sound-effects are both trifling encore pieces, while A door is ajar isn't even that: a very brief and obscurely unfunny private joke, preceded by 28 seconds of portentous silence. The hushed, archaic chantings of Arvo Part are an island amid all this; of austerely moving quasi-religious ritual to some, and they will find the latest version of Fratres (its fourth, I believe) not its least effective.
Both readings of the Schnittke are excellent that's the main thing. I find a bit more impulse and eloquence in the Britten Quartet's account, and prefer it on that score alone. Their Beethoven is grave, not very heart-on-sleeve (the Cavatina almost reserved, at a fastish tempo), its energy audibly saved for a splendidly athletic Grosse Fuge (the replacement finale is not played). For listeners primarily concerned with Op. 130, the Vegh Quartet (on Auvidis-Valois/Pinnacle) still strike me as unrivalled, with the Lindsay on ASV pretty close behind and the luxuriously glossy Guarneri (Philips) out of sight in the rear. But the Britten Quartet's version is an alternative to more subjective, highly-wrought interpretations, and to hear the Schnittke before or after it is an experience that can make you listen to Beethoven with renewed ears.'