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Donald Macleod explores the strange, brilliant and sometimes nightmarish world of the Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke. Today - unravelling how Schnittke's blended jarringly disparate musical styles.

The music of Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is like being lost in a hall of mirrors. Staring back at you is the whole of music history - from Bach to modern pop via tangos, Soviet work songs, Gregorian chant and Viennese waltzes - refracted and distorted, and woven together to create a uniquely personal style. Thrilling, grotesque, occasionally nightmarish - Schnittke creates a world where everything has a hidden meaning. Beethoven's Fifth suddenly springs terrifyingly out of the darkness in the midst of an otherwise chaotic symphony. Or a cheap Russian pop song appears inexplicably amidst a Baroque chorale. Schnittke's world of suppressed meanings perfectly captured life under the cosh of Soviet Communism. All this week, Donald Macleod unpicks the strands of a musician often seen as the heir to Shostakovich - and perhaps the last truly great composer of the 20th century.

In today's episode, Donald unravels the term "polystylism", which Schnittke himself coined to describe his fusing of wildly eclectic styles - from Bach to pop to hypermodernism to Tchaikovsky - in a unique, often dreamlike musical voice. But what does it all mean?

The Cloak (Gogol Suite)
USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor

Concerto Grosso No 3
Sarah & Deborah Nemtanu, violins
Orchestre Chambre de Paris
Sacha Goetzel, conductor

Voices Of Nature
Danish National Radio Choir
Stefan Parkman, conductor

Schnittke, arr Boguslavsky
Suite In The Old Style
Roman Mints, violin
Olga Martynolva, harpsichord
Andrei Doynikov & Dmitri Vlasik, percussion

Hymn No 3, for cello, bassoon, harp, harpsichord and tubular bells
Torleif Thedéen, cello
Christian Davidson, bassoon
Ingegerd Fredlund, harp
Entcho Raoukanov, harpsichord
Mayumi Kamata, tubular bells

Producer: Steven Rajam.