[2] In May 1976, Gidon Kremer and Tatiana Grindenko asked Schnittke to compose a work for them and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra under the conductor Saulius Sondeckis to be performed several times in 1977 and recorded.
[3] The score was ready by the end of 1976, and the piece was premiered on 21 March 1977 under the baton of Estonian conductor Eri Klas, a mutual friend of both Kremer and Schnittke, together with the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra.
After the premiere, Schnittke made several cuts in the score, and subsequent performances of the final version followed in Vilnius, Moscow, Riga, Tallinn and Budapest.
During the Salzburg Festival in August 1977, Kremer and Grindenko recorded the piece for Eurodisc together with the London Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
[2] The first recording of this version was made in 2008 by flutist Sharon Bezaly and oboist Christopher Cowie together with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Owain Arwel Hughes for BIS.
The instrumentation featuring two solo violins against a relatively small string section and harpsichord compares well to the Baroque concerto grossos of Corelli and others.
That’s why I’ve decided to put together some fragments from my cartoon film music: a joyful childeren’s chorus, a nostalgic atonal serenade, a piece of hundred-percent-guaranteed Correlli (Made in the USSR), and finally, my grandmother’s favourite tango played by my great-grandmother on a harpsichord.
The quasi-baroque tune at the opening of the rondo was originally a song (sung by the Russian actor-singer legend Vladimir Vysotsky) at the beginning of Schnittke's score for the film How Tsar Peter got the Black Man Married.
[2] The first movement Preludio, marked Andante, starts with a nursery rhyme-type melody on prepared piano: The main theme is then introduced by the two solo violins, calling to each other with intervals of minor seconds, and usually staying close to each other by the same intervallic distance: After a soloistic passage in the two violins followed by the violas slither down their strings to a bottom pedal, note the second idea begins.
The main theme of the fifth movement Rondo, marked Agitato, has a Vivaldian character while referring unmistakably to Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No.
Sharon Bezaly (flute), Christopher Cowie (oboe), Grant Brasler (harpsichord), Albert Combrink (piano) / Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra / Owain Arwel Hughes (conductor) (recorded 12/2008) Maria Alikhanova (flute), Dmitri Bulgakov (oboe) / Chamber Orchestra Kremlin / Misha Rachlevsky (conductor) (recorded 2011?)