MUSIC REVIEW : Schnittke Symphony at <i> Glasnost</i> Music Festival in Boston

Strange things are happening at the Hub of the universe. Marvelous things.

Cultural glasnost is exploding all over the city.

Soviet composers of numerous aesthetic persuasions are introducing a delirious array of compositions, big and small, progressive and regressive, good and not-so-good. Moreover, they are embellishing much of the music making with cozy lectures, and there doesn’t seem to be a party line within earshot.

A renegade contingent from the mighty Bolshoi Ballet, led by a wondrous 62-year-old legend named Maya Plisetskaya, is holding forth at the Wang Center. The Opera Company of Boston is presenting its own modification of a major, modern production of a Gogol extravaganza from Moscow.

There also are recitals, chamber serenades, poetry readings, educational-outreach programs, folk fests, elaborate mime happenings. As many as six different events crowd each day.

This is a festival called “Making Music Together.” It is the slightly disorganized, sometimes quasi-improvised, lavishly and lovingly executed, wildly unfocused, eminently blissful brainchild of Sarah Caldwell. Boston’s most revered artistic iconoclast realized this impossible dream in conjunction with the popular Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin.

The complex plan is very simple. The Russians and the Americans make Russian music together this year in Massachusetts. Next year, they make American music together in Moscow.

The $4.6-million festival, which opened with a gala concert March 11 and continues through next Saturday, is, of course, a terrific idea. And despite the usual last-minute changes, hitches and glitches, it seems to be working wonderfully.

On Thursday, for instance, the festivities began at noon with a so-called Profile Concert in the ornate, slightly decayed lobby of what now passes as the Opera House. It used to be the Keith Memorial, a movie/vaudeville palace.

The ambiance was decidedly informal. Ladies served sandwiches and salads on paper plates. Tickets, including lunch, cost $15, but no one bothered to collect tickets. The printed programs arrived at the stroke of 12.

Lev Ginsburg, a leading Soviet musicologist and critic, functioned as the charming, erudite host. He chatted in excellent English with the small but attentive audience.

The center of attention on this occasion turned out to be Georgy Dmitriev, 43, a former student of Kabalevsky. The composer spoke about himself with self-effacing candor (through an interpreter). His music, sampled live and on recordings, spoke about him as a crafty academic eclectic with romantic tendencies.

Edward Harrison, a Bostonian, clanged through Dmitriev’s hyperactive “Percussionata” brilliantly, even though he had seen the music for the first time only the day before. “Kiev,” subtitled “Symphonic Chronicle,” alluded to the great cathedral bells, to nicely muddled bombast, and, in passing, to Mussorgsky.

Most interesting, however, was the world premiere of “Warsaw Fantasia,” an often percussive workout for violin and piano, replete with references to Chopin and Wieniawski. It was played with dazzling panache by Oleg Kagan, a bravura violinist who may have few peers anywhere, and Vassily Lobanov.

If Dmitriev strikes Western ears as a solid, modest talent, at least two of the Soviet guests have served notice of possible greatness. One, about whom more will be heard later, is Sophia Gubaidulina. The other is Alfred Schnittke, 53, a witty radical whose rise to prominence at home has suffered certain obstacles.

He describes the evolution of his creative profile this way:

“My musical development took a course across piano-concerto romanticism, neoclassic academicism, and attempts at eclectic synthesis (Orff and Schoenberg), and took cognizance also of the unavoidable proofs of masculinity in serial self-denial. Having arrived at the final station, I decided to get off the already overcrowded train. Since then I have tried to proceed on foot.”

That process was documented Friday night by the Boston Symphony (still one of the world’s finest orchestras) at the 2,200-seat Symphony Hall (still one of the world’s finest auditoria). Here, Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted the American premiere of Schnittke’s Symphony No. 1.

As an imperative overture, the genial maestro led the orchestra through a mellow, glowing performance of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony. Following picturesque tradition, the musicians extinguished their electric candles and gradually wandered offstage as the final cadence beckoned.

Twenty minutes and two stylistic centuries later, they literally came running back for an incredibly well-organized marathon study in orchestral chaos.

Schnittke moves his players on and off in a bizarre series of satiric theatrical maneuvers. Trashing symphonic convention and, at the same time, reinventing it, he builds a massive sonic collage on fragments of Beethoven, Chopin, Strauss, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Gregorian chant, jazz and, ultimately, Haydn’s “Farewell.”

He continually yanks at, provokes, tests the audience’s--and performers’--sympathies. There is a lot of Ivesian ear-stretching here, a lot of glorious cacophony, a lot of seemingly improvised violence and, yes, a lot of strange, ethereal, affecting lyricism.

At one point, the players are supposed to threaten the conductor with angry gestures, and a few of them seemed all too sincere. For its part, the audience became increasingly rife with restless natives, and defections increased as the symphony rambled to its deceptive close (or new beginning). That, not incidentally, occurred well over an hour after it had started.

Some may find Schnittke’s composition gimmicky. Indeed, it may be that. But, at worst, it is the gimmickry of a bold, heroic, inspired master.

The symphony was completed in 1972. It received its premiere two years later--in the relative obscurity and safety of Gorky. Moscow heard it only in 1985, and the West--progressive London, of course--caught up only last December.

Los Angeles should not be far behind.