Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

2. Alfred SchnittkeRequiem



Tell me about this one. How did you come across it?

Through ECM, the new series –the classical branch of ECM, which I discovered through another collection in a bookstore. I once got arrested with a CD outside of his store.

What? Please explain!

I found this guy that had all the ECM new series and a lot of stuff by American minimalists like Steve Reich, Philip Glass. So I went to buy a CD. There are these vans – the morality police. They tell women to do their hijab right and things. I was this weird looking teenager with a bunch of CDs looking suspicious, so they called me into the van. And they said, ‘Okay, What is this? What is this CD? I bet it’s pornography’. And I was like – its instrumental music, it’s actually religious! I was begging to keep them.

Were you carrying ECM CDs or Schnittke?

The ECM new series, but through that I got to know all these former Soviet Union composers, like [Giya] Kancheli, [Valentin] Silvestrov, and of course, Schnittke. So I got to Schnittke through these, but he got more important than the others for me, because of the tension and contrasts in his music.

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