Great interpretation of the Requiem by Polyansky! That alone is worth owning this CD.
However the fantastic concerto for piano & strings is a write off! Khudolei is an unimaginative pianist, did not even bother to follow Schnittke's precise score. His heavyhanded playing went against the grain of this piece and he managed to make the orchestra and Polyansky become a bad accompanist!
One would think Chandos could afford a good pianist!
The best recording of this piece is pianist Victoria Postnikova on Erato if you can find it!

These are some of my favourite pieces by Schnittke, and they are treated well in this recording. It is difficult to imagine a better performance of the Requiem, and the Concerto is also nicely handled (though the recorded sound gets a tad muddled in places).
These are some rigorous, but relatively approachable, late 20th century pieces that are very moving, deeply expressive. Highly recommended.

"In the last two years of his life, French composer Olivier Messiaen devoted most of his energies to the creation of his final large-scale work for orchestra, Éclairs sur l'au delá. Somewhere along the line, Messiaen received a commission from oboist Heinz Holliger for a new work, and Messiaen began to comply with this request even as Éclairs sur l'au delá was still in progress.
When death came to Messiaen on April 27, 1992, Éclairs sur l'au delá was as yet unperformed, but the score was complete. In the case of the Holliger commission, by now titled Concert à quatre, Messiaen had produced four movements, of which the first and third movements were complete, but the second and fourth remained only in sketch form. The second movement, it turned out, was an arrangement of an already existing piece, the Vocalise-étude originally composed in 1939 for voice and piano. Messiaen's widow, pianist Yvonne Loriod, fleshed out the sketches for the fourth movement Rondeau adding some of Messiaen's characteristic birdcalls for good measure. Composer George Benjamin, a former student of Messiaen, completed the orchestration with some advice from Holliger. It is called Concert à quatre as there are actually four soloists involved in the concerto, namely oboe (played originally by Holliger), cello (premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich), flute (played by Catherine Cantin), and piano (Loriod).
One of the most striking things about the Concert à quatre is the fact that it embraces tonality with such enthusiasm -- the "Vocalise" movement hearkens back to the world of the French Impressionists. While the Concert à quatre has its moments of explosiveness and violence, the overall feeling of the work is relaxed, as though Messiaen laid his pen aside after a day, and a life's work, done well, drifting off into a daydream from which, sadly, he was never to wake up."

"Though I somehow always think of Penderecki as a composer of vocal works, here his voice is the violin, in one of the most astounding pieces for the instrument I have ever heard. It has mystery, drama, and intense beauty, and rather than six separate movements, it stretches from mood to mood, segueing into them. My favorite is the transition from the fifth to the sixth, with the orchestra sounding more like the rumblings of nature than instruments.
The concerto was dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was the soloist in the enthusiastically received first performance in 1995. The extreme difficulty of the concerto must be daunting for a violinist, but Mutter's technical mastery equals her sensitivity and artistry. Of special note is the 5th movement cadenza, which is enthralling.
Like most Penderecki works, this is a composition that gets better with every hearing; one has to get to know this piece, for it to reveal the full magnificence of its soul.
The Bartok Sonata no. 2 takes us into far different territory: Angular, harsh and energized, it's a whirl of virtuoso technique and dynamic sound. Lambert Orkis on piano counterbalances Mutter's violin, producing varied tones and rhythms."