Epilogue from 'Peer Gynt'

Vocalise

John Neumeier did not agree with the rather short ending of the Ibsen drama and wanted the ending to be spacious, transfigured and unearthly. Schnittke understood this and tried to find an appropriate musical solution. In his search for a seemingly endless sound perspective, he came up with the idea of using a chorus with a floating and circling vocal line and superimposing it on the orchestral score like a "shadow sound" (from a tape). The result was a 30-minute, very quiet and otherworldly Adagio, which presented Neumeier with a difficult choreographic task. He found the solution in creating three impressive pictures: First, Neumeier designs a tableau of the inevitability of death, which confronts Peer in a hundred different forms. The second picture is a consoling one: The blind Solveig recognises Peer, takes the empty shell of his clothes and prepares to die with him. The third perspective leads the redeemed couple into a bright, unearthly world, where they are dreamily danced around by a blissful round of beautiful human couples. Schnittke later had this subtle final music - a meditation that reaches beyond death - performed as an independent orchestral work, and he also transformed it into a very intimate version for violoncello, piano and tape for Mstislav Rostropovich.