Mr Schnittke is this week's Composer of the Week (30/07/18 - 3/08/18), and it therefore seemed opportune to start a thread of his own. I have to say that, genius and greatest Russian composer post-Shostakovitch or not, following an early admiration going back to when over here we first heard of him, I quickly started to get diminishing returns and to find far too much me-me-me in his polystylistic greed [sic]. That was until today, when I got to hear several works I had not heard previously, such as the early Prokofievian first VC, though I knew the extravagent first symphony before.