Faust - as you've never seen him before

This is the conception of Alfred Schnittke, however, whose bizarre imagination leads him up many an unconventional path in his opera The History of Dr Johann Faustus.

Under the title "Between Two Worlds", Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO are presenting the work of this remarkable composer, Shostakovich's successor and the man who seized hold of the European and Russian traditions (the two worlds of the title), fusing them in a wild, exuberant, postmodernist fantasy.

Basing his text on a 16th-century book of folk tales about Faust by Johann Spies, Schnittke ostentatiously confronts the Germanic tradition to which the Faust legend is central.

The first act parodies the passions of Bach and Schütz with tenor (Markus Brutscher) in constant falsetto mode taking the recitatives to realms undreamt of, while the chorus (the admirable Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatory) observes and comments ironically in quasi-Baroque style.

Some 80 minutes of excerpts from the opera (most of the first and third acts with an important section of the second all presented in a single, seamless sequence) were given in a semi-staging by Annabel Arden that made imaginative use of the whole auditorium.

Falsetto shrieking and empty musical gestures abound in a work that even in abridged form can outstay its welcome. But there was a passage towards the end, at Faust's death, when a menacing tango morphed into a souped-up production number so camp and banal as to touch the sublime.

Perhaps only a Schnittke could have brought it off, and with Stephen Richardson a sturdy Faust and the splendid Anna Larsson and Andrew Watts sharing the honours as Mephistopheles, this was a very welcome opportunity to sample a major project of one of the late 20th century's leading Russian composers.

Haydn and Wagner in the first half provided a suitable cultural context, to be explored alongside further scores of Schnittke in this ambitious two-week festival.

Information: 020 7840 4242, www.lpo.org.uk/schnittke. Radio 3, 24 November.

London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jurowski: Between Two Worlds
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, Waterloo, SE1 8XX