Schnittke 7

At less than 30 minutes, the seventh is the shortest of Schnittke's symphonies and I wonder if this reflects how hard it was for him to write. The central slow movement is gone so quickly I hardly notice it passing. Like some of the music in Nielsen's 6th and Shostakovich's 15th, the closing movement of Schnittke's 7th has an air of laughing in the face of death, nothing left but jokey despair. This is disturbed and disturbing music, not something to relax to at all. I cannot locate it on youtube, so here is an alternative.