We stood up with the ovation, limp with physical and emotional fatigue. We had just been taken to the edge, riding a turbo-charged monocycle on a tightrope.But what a memento This would be the one I would play to my grandchildren. I would sit them on my knee and, if they could still hear after the sonic onslaught, I would say to them proudly, “I was there.”. Who was Alfred Schnittke? In the West, the reply comes off pat: a political martyr, a professional invalid, and the inventor of something called musical “polystylism”.
At the inevitable post-mortem the following day he would have said: “Last night in ze Respighi, at Claudia Cardinale, here was ze big spaghetti.” He would then rehearse something completely different Half an hour later he would return to the subject. This is echt Silvestri – a live performance (in the Colston Hall, Bristol) It’s all there in an astonishing 22 minutes. The terrified horn section hanging on by their evening dress tails; an even more terrified-sounding solo cello, and the piano starting the trudge up the Appian Way totally out of step with the Roman legion. This would have almost certainly been due to Silvestri’s beat, which at times could be euphemistically described as alternative.For a man so lacking in ego he was notoriously unable to admit culpability, except for the occasional tell-tale sign when his shoulders would heave with laughter. At least, too much material is better than not enough, and thankfully, for such a colourful subject, anecdotes abound, gleaned from an impressive array of personae – perhaps most tellingly from the orchestral players.Whatever the book’s shortcomings, the genius, humanity and humour of the maestro shines through, and its publication is a cause for celebration.The genius shines through most of all and more easily available, in his Bournemouth recording of Respighi’s The Pines of Rome. These often refer to similar incidents to those he is describing, but at another stage of Silvestri’s career Consequently the book is chronologically chaotic. We zoom from Bournemouth to Bucharest to Berlin to Bournemouth again, like David Attenborough popping up at random points of the globe just for one sentence in a wildlife spectacular.
Far from being wilful and eccentric in his interpretations, his insights and “quirks” were the results of endless study of the score. Every known edition, every known recording, was relentlessly scrutinised and documented – a process that lasted all night and every night. Critical hammering, often the result of ignorance, hurt him.Gritten makes this point by cramming the book with press reviews. In fact, he has almost tried to pack in too much information. Parentheses inserted into already long-winded sentences abound. He also worked at a time when critical reaction was suspicious of interpretative imagination and spontaneity.
