Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke grew up between worlds: born in 1934 in Engels, a Volga German town in the Soviet Union, to a family of German and Jewish background, he spent part of his childhood in Vienna before settling in Moscow, where he studied and later taught. For years he earned his living scoring Soviet films, writing music for dozens of them.

That day job fed his concert music. Schnittke became known for jamming different styles together in a single piece, so a solemn Baroque-sounding passage might collapse into something harsh and modern, or drift into a tango. He called the approach polystylism, but you don't need the term to hear the collisions. Soviet officialdom viewed him with suspicion, and performances of his work were often obstructed. From 1985 on he suffered a series of strokes, yet kept composing, and in 1990 he moved to Hamburg, where he died in 1998.

Start with the Concerto Grosso no. 1, the clearest and most gripping introduction to his style-colliding world.