In 1812, after his seventh and eighth symphonies, Beethoven wrote his 10th and final violin-piano sonata. There is an unimaginable gulf between the revolutionary fervour, anarchic power of the Kreutzer Sonata of 10 years earlier and the pastoral peace of the last sonata. The ‘bird trills’ of the main theme are as though they had just arrived from the brook scene of the Pastoral Symphony. The sonata of fragile beauty and written with an especially delicate hand does not fit into the production of the ‘heroic’ period, rather it is much more a harbinger of late Beethoven. 

Schnittke’s piano quintet completed in 1976 is a particularly sombre work composed in memory of his mother who passed away in 1972. Similarly to Ligeti’s first string quartet, this five-movement composition is a monumental variation series written for a single leading idea. The constantly present idée fixe is nothing less than a strongly chromatic closing figure. Schnittke learned the means of musical expression for mourning and depression from his master, Shostakovich, all the while remaining loyal to his musical language tapped from several different sources. The eerie waltz (movement No. 2) woven from the motif B-A-C-H evokes both Bach and Tchaikovsky. The friction of the parts, the maniacal death knells and thrilling trills (third and fourth movements) lead through an especially discouraging landscape until the – apparently absolutely improbable – resolution of the fifth movement. Schnittke’s piano quintet is one of the ‘agonizingly great’ masterpieces of the 20^th century.