ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998): The Census List, EDISON DENISOV (1929-1996): Peinture, SOFIA GUBAIDULINA (b.1931): Offertorium for Violin and Orchestra, DENISOV/GUBAIDULINA/SCHNITTKE: March.

Description: This recording is taken from an historic 1982 concert that heralded the emerging thaw in state control of Soviet music and the consequent dramatic increase in freedom of avant garde expression. Denisov's 'Painting' is a 10-minute tone poem in boldly and unrepentantly atonal style, yet with an almost impressionistic sense of orchestral color. Shimmering, kaleidoscopic shades of light and shadow give way to a powerful climax indebted to Shostakovich, before the abstract textures reassert themselves. The Schnittke, derived from incidental music for a play, is a gleefully ironic polystylistic suite full of borrowings from classical, romantic, and kitschily popular idioms, distorted, assaulted and sneered at as only Schnittke knew how. Pricelessly entertaining (and assembled with consummate skill). Gubaidulina's supervirtuosic violin concerto with its layers of religious symbolism and eclectic thematic transformations in an encyclopædia of 20th-century styles was a mere two years old at the time of this performance, placing this event early in the performing tradition of the piece that arguably elevated the composer to world renown. A tiny collaborative march by all three composers, that sounds like very silly Shostakovich, rounds out the disc. Oleg Kagan (violin), USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra; Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (live April 15, 1982).