Schnittke: "Concerto Grosso no. 1"

I continue to delve into the world of composer Alfred Schnittke (1934 - 1998). The main attraction in a lot of his music is his use of horror soundtrack-like screaming modernist strings. Really great for an old Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock-score fan like me. I don't know if it's deliberate with those Hitchock-like birds on the cover above, but it would make sense.

That kind of music with screaming dissonant strings... at first it's somewhat annoying, but after you get used to it, it's like really cool guitar distortion in rock music - you can't get enough of it.

Anyway, I already explored his Piano Quintet and his four string quartets, and now I'm getting started on his concerti grossi ('big concerts'). The first one is just amazing, scored for two solo violins (it was comissioned by violinist Gidon Kremer), hapsichord, prepared piano (a piano made to sound 'weird' with various metal parts on the strings) and 21 strings

Here's one of the middle movements of the concerto in good sound quality:



Here's a live recording of the second movement:


The people who comment on the clips on youtube kinda gets it: "This stuff is so evil and dark sounding, but I love all the dissonance", and "It sounds something that came out of the movie "the nightmare before christmas" but much more better than that."

And here's the cover for the old edition of the concerto - couldn't resist posting it, because I love Russian constructivism: