Pianist Nicolas Stavy, who has already made recordings devoted to works by Boris Tishchenko (BIS2189) and Dmitri Shostakovich (BIS2550), now presents the first instalment of a complete survey of Alfred Schnittke’s compositions for solo piano. This recording presents works from various periods of the Russian-German composer’s career – from the 1950s, which the composer described as the ‘years of obscurity’, to the 1990s, a time shaped both by world fame and serious illness. While Schnittke wrote relatively little music for the piano, each work reflects – or sometimes anticipates – the phases of the composer’s creative development.

The Five Preludes and Fugue and the Prelude and Fugue belong to Schnittke’s first creative phase, when he was still under the influence of Shostakovich. The Little Piano Pieces, composed for the composer’s six-year-old son, are an example of his ‘polystylism’, juxtaposing and combining music of various styles from the past and present. The Sonata no.2 and the Five Aphorisms, both from 1990, return to a more ascetic and abstract language, with a bleaker tone, no doubt echoing his serious health problems.