Schnittke’s 12 Penitential Psalms (1988) are not biblical: Nos. 1-11 use sixteenth-century Russian texts and No. 12 is a wordless meditation which encapsulates the spirit and style of what precedes it. Though at times dark and despairing in tone, this is in no sense liturgical music. It is too expansive, and reaches towards the ecstatic too consistently, to qualify as ascetic or austere. Indeed, the warmly euphonious chorale-like textures with which several of the movements end are sumptuous enough for one to imagine Jan Garbarek’s soulful saxophone weaving its way through them.
As this suggests, the recording is extremely, and not inappropriately, resonant, and the performance is polished to a fault, the individual lines superbly controlled and the textures balanced with a fine feeling for their weight and diversity. It is also very different from the earlier, rival version on Chandos, with its less atmospheric, more enclosed, acoustic and faster tempos – seven minutes shorter overall. But even though some may find this ECM issue just a little too refined for its own good, it realizes the work’s expressive world with imposing and irresistible authenticity.
In the Penitential Psalms, Schnittke seems to be doing penance for the extravagant indulgences of works such as Stille Nacht and the Viola Concerto, abandoning modernism in general and expressionism in particular, while reinventing a kind of romanticism far removed from that of the later Prokofiev or Shostakovich. The music nevertheless retains strong links with the images of lament and spiritual aspiration, and there is nothing in the least artificial or contrived about its emotional aura. I cannot imagine a more convincing or better recorded account of it than this one.'