Piano Quartet

Alfred Schnittke based the composition of his piano quartet on a scherzo fragment by the 16-year-old Gustav Mahler, first published in 1973. These 17 bars were intended to introduce the second movement of a piano quartet - an unfinished study by Mahler:
According to Alfred Schnittke, he initially planned to literally complete this fragment and continue it in the style of the early Mahler. This developed into a completely different process: the endeavour to ‘remember something that never came about’ (Schnittke). This attempt to trace Mahler's ‘language’ fails after three unsuccessful attempts. In the end, the composition leads to a literal quotation of Mahler's fragment.
The world premiere of the piano quartet took place on 29 July 1988 as part of the
Chamber Music Festival in Kuhmo (Finland), which had commissioned this piano quartet.
In the same year, Schnittke incorporated the composition in a slightly altered orchestral version as the second movement of his 5th Symphony.