Alfred Schnittke's First Violin Sonata (1963) is one of the most popular post-WWII violin sonatas in the repertoire. The reasons are clear: the work is a consummate synthesis of formal concision, expressive intensity, and cutting attitude. It is one of Schnittke's most classical works, which isn't to say it's his most representative; Schnittke is also an expert in the sprawling, the overblown and absurd. But the crux of his gifts seem to lie covering both sides of the aesthetic fence, and thus a fellow who can write hour-plus wrecking-ball symphonies, but also write works as ideally fusioned and statuesque as this sonata.

Perhaps the sonata's most noteworthy element is its eclecticism—not a superficial groping for any and all materials that might help the composer, but a thorough, integrated eclecticism. This work comes early in Schnittke's career, when he was still assimilating the many influences which would shape his mature voice, but the composer here has a firm grasp of all of them, and he shrewdly parses them out where they can be best employed.

For large-scale form, Schnittke looks to the Italian Baroque, especially nodding to the sonata's beginning with Arcangelo Corelli; thus the work's four-movement scheme (Andante-Allegretto-Largo-Allegretto), as and some of its smaller formal techniques, like fortspinnung and subsections in double-tempo. For motivic structure and organization, Schnittke looks to Alban Berg's famous Violin Concerto; like Berg's work, Schnittke arranges its pitch-material with twelve-tone rows. But also like Berg's rows, Schnittke's rows are grouped completely into thirds-so motives sound tonal even though they aren't tonal, and rows can be grouped into tonal-sounding triads without breaking their own rules. The resulting work is thus a kind of double-entendre, punning between two opposite musical worlds with ingenuity and not a bit of wit.

If that technique is pure Berg, the violin sonata's gestures are a hybrid, a mix of irony and earnest pathos which seem indebted to Béla Bartók and Dmitry Shostakovich. Both composers have a knack for following moments of sublime, painful sincerity with the banal and vulgar and it's a rhetorical move that seems to have stayed with Schnittke throughout his work. The later composer's contribution seems to be an acceleration of these attitude-shifts: they come fast and furious on each others' heels in the Schnittke sonata.

The opening Adagio, for example, begins in a cantankerous but diminutive mood, but it quickly expands from its conversational beginning into expressionist shrieks, and just as quickly slides into a solemn, hymn-like chorale. Likewise, after this mysterious close the second movement Allegretto follows with a decidedly flippant head-motive; and after the sober emotional heart of the work, the third movement Largo, the finale barrels in with a catchy lounge-jazz tune.

And yet over the whole work lies a larger irony, less Shostakovich or Bartók than Igor Stravinsky. Like Stravinsky, Schnittke seems to command two privileges: to take what he wants from where he wants, and to built a perfect construction with what he has amassed. The resulting work gives us a lot to enjoy, especially the ironic play between opposing viewpoints, whether of aesthetics, emotions, allusions or traditions. However, this approach does leave the composer's own personality a bit elusive; he only pokes out in the holes between musics that aren't quite his.

This last quality would become the overriding expressive and aesthetic effect of Schnittke's later work, in a much more radical way. In the First Violin Sonata, however, Schnittke's eclecticism still adheres to classical standards of integrity, and does so with inspired mastery.

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