Piano Sonata No. 1 (Schnittke)

Piano Sonata No. 1 (1987-88), dedicated to Vladimir Feltsman and constructed partly on Feltsman's musical monogram. The work represents Schnittke's mature polystylistic piano style at its most concentrated: dense textures, extreme technical demands, abrupt juxtapositions of tonal allusion and atonal aggression. It marked a significant development in Schnittke's piano writing, moving away from the more experimental middle-period works toward the austere late style that characterises his music from the late 1980s onward.

Study Schnittke's dynamic markings carefully: he uses extreme contrasts (pppp to fff within a few bars) as structural markers, not just expressive gradations. The polystylistic quotations and allusions are deliberate; the performer should be familiar with the Romantic and Baroque references Schnittke invokes so as to inflect them appropriately when they appear.