Symphony No. 6 / Concerto grosso No. 2

'Certainly these works are both vital pieces in the post-modern jigsaw of Schnittke's output, and these Chandos performances are at least as good as, if not better than, the rival versions on BIS. Tatiana Gridenko (one of the first Soviet advocates of Schnittke's music) and Alexander Ivashkin (his biographer) bring an air of authority and commitment to the Concerto grosso while Valeri Polyansky gives the internal tensions of the Symphony a razor's edge.'
- BBC Music Magazine

'With two fine soloists in the Concerto grosso, this is a must for collectors of Chandos' Schnittke series, and a welcome reminder of one of the later 20th-century's most distinctive and troubling musical voices.'
- Gramophone

Throughout this disc, the echt-Russian timbres of Valeri Polyansky's band have a compulsion of their own, empowering what rhetoric there is with what seems like the appropriate clout.'
- International Record Review

The disc features Alexander Ivashkin, one of today's most distinguished cellists, who was friends with the composer from 1969 until his death in 1998. Ivashkin has made an enormous contribution to the Chandos catalogue with his benchmark recordings of his native Russian repertoire.

Chandos' survey of Schnittke's music has brought many new people to this fascinating repertoire and thus contributed to the increasing awareness of this composer's works in recent years