Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet, completed about 35 years after the previous quintet, is a very different work. This is full of sadness, as Schnittke mourned the death of his mother and then the death of Shostakovich. It’s not an easy work to assimilate, the atonal music having little by way of melody or comfortable harmonies. Violinist Mikhail Shmidt had worked with the composer in Moscow and described him as a modest, shy man who thought others’ music better than his own. Continue reading Hamelin Treats Seattle to a Cheery Shostakovich and Dolorous Schnittke