infotext:
At the Weinberg retrospective of the 2010 Bregenz Festival, the focus was on the staged world premiere of his opera Die Passenger, but the performance of more than twenty other works provided an insight into the incredible richness of the oeuvre of this forgotten composer. Weinberg felt compelled to compose to justify surviving the Holocaust as the only one in his family. The resulting magnificent symphonic and chamber music works are full of melancholy and defiance. Thank you to NEOS for allowing others to be a part of the rediscovery of this inspired and important composer.
David Pountney
Symphony No. 17 »Memory« Op. 137 (1982–1984)
Mieczysław Weinberg combined his Symphonies Nos. 1980 to 17, written in the 19s, into a trilogy. The overarching title The Threshold of War refers to the Second World War and the associated memories of the Jewish-Polish composer, who found a new home in the Soviet Union. The 17th symphony is preceded by a motto by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1898–1966).
Like Weinberg, Akhmatova suffered under the Stalin regime and was rehabilitated late. Translated, their verses read: »My country, you have regained your power and your freedom! But the burnt years of the war will always be preserved in the treasury of people's memories.« The work, composed between 1982 and 1984, is a purely instrumental symphony and does not use any vocal parts – like the 18th symphony special importance to.
As is so often the case with Weinberg, the orchestra is very large. Only the opening Allegro sostenuto has leaner instrumentation. The strings strike up a mournful G minor chant. It is the memory of the war referred to in the symphony title that resonates in this beginning. More restless and with Dies irae quotations from the Latin mass for the dead, the second movement ignites the fire of militant conflicts. At the end, a lonely solo violin soothes the masses and leads into the hopeful coda.
Weinberg's compositional technique is also extremely multifaceted in the 17th symphony. The third sentence is an example. It fuses baroque counterpoint and traditional scherzo robustness. The trio helps the woodwinds to have their proper effect. The coda is just as concise as it is effective. What follows after this rapid movement is a slow swan song. Clarinets and horns give the final Andante a "romantic" touch.
The proximity to Mahler or Bruckner is obvious (e.g. in the muted brass towards the end). Embedded is a chamber music section for solo strings and celesta. The grandiose G major ending sounds like the musical setting of the first two lines of Akhmatova's motto. But only on the surface does the work end in the sense of »Socialist Realism«. Hidden in the positive ending is the artist's victory over the Stalin regime and any art dictatorship.
Although Weinberg pursued a non-political path throughout his life, the late symphonies were also written against the background of glasnost and perestroika. On the other hand, the composer belonged to a dying generation. Works of this kind now have "their place in the lumber room," because this music does not correspond to "current fashions," Weinberg remarked in 1988, both ironically and self-critically.
The spirit of new music reached Russia. The young composers questioned such large-format symphonies in general. They were seen as ballast from the Cold War, as art forms from a bygone era. In the West, on the other hand, Weinberg's music was widely recognized from the mid-1990s. Their high quality and Weinberg's equal rank between Prokofiev and Shostakovich were praised.
Matthew Corvin
program:
Symphony No. 17 "Memory"
op. 137 (1982–1984)
[01] Allegro sostenuto 10:13
[02] allegro molto 18:41
[03] allegro moderate 07:26
[04] Walking 16:38
total time: 53:01
Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Vladimir Fedoseyev, conductor
live recording
Press:
12/2011
These recordings are the first and second in what I hope will be a series emanating from the Bregenz Festival. The Festival also saw the stage premiere of Weinberg's opera The Passenger now enjoying an eight night run at the ENO. The ambitious Requiem so what performed. The Passenger (1967-8) is based on a disturbing story in which a former Auschwitz guarded by chance meets one of 'her prisoners' on an ocean liner. The production is by David Pountney who supplies a brief preface to the notes for each of these NEOS CDs. There are to be other performances of The Passenger at Wielki Teatr, Warsaw and Teatro Real, Madrid. It's time has clearly come and surely a recording cannot be too far behind. There are six other operas as well as 22 symphonies and 17 string quartets.
Weinberg, also shown in previous times in Russianised form as 'Moishe Vainberg' first emerged for many LP listeners in the 1970s on EMI-Melodiya ASD 2755. Kogan was the soloist in the Violin Concerto and Kondrashin conducted the Fourth Symphony. That coupling was reissued on CD on Olympia OCD622. Olympia, during the 1980s and until about 2003, issued a 'Vainberg Edition' the symphonic volumes of which numbered OCD471 (6, 10), OCD472 (7, 12), OCD589 (18, 19) and OCD590 (17). These are now difficult to find and/or prohibitively expensive on ebay or Amazon. However they have been joined by a new generation of CDs from Chandos who have produced recordings of symphonies 1 and 7, 3, 4, 5, 14 and 16 as well as some of the concertos. Add to this harvest home the Northern Flowers CD of Symphony No. 1 and Alto's revival of two Olympias of the chamber symphonies and Symphony No. 2. The Manchester-based Danel Quartet who also performed at the Bregenz Festival have a cycle of the quartets with CPO: The five CPO volumes of the Weinberg: String Quartet are: Volume 1: 7773132; Volume 2: 7773922; Volume 3: 7773932; Volume 4: 7773942; Volume 5: 7775662. The Piano Quintet is on a Nimbus disc.
The Sixth Symphony – unlike the 17th – is in five movements and is laid out for boys choir and orchestra. The choir sings three poems two of them being by dissenting poets. The last - used in the finale - deploys a poem that would have sung directly and compliantly to the Soviet regime. The words are not reproduced in the booklet which is a shame - a small shame. War and the holocaust arch over this music and over the eight and ninth symphonies. It should be borne in mind that the composer's parents and sister died in the Warsaw ghetto and that the symphony was contemporary with the Cuban missile crisis. The music is grave and serious however within this consistent intensity Weinberg's ideas range freely and in splendid and ear-intriguing variety. There's a suggestion of klezmer nostalgia at 9.00 in the first movement which ends with sustained strings and quiet intoning of the solo clarinet. The second movement sometimes recalls Orff and the Britten Spring Symphony. The singing is fine, soft yet incisive. Weinberg paints with a nuanced palette balancing furious and serene. There are however some garish moments where orchestra and choir have pari passu roles. The third orchestra-only movement is explosive with high-shrieking woodwind. This is raucously active writing suggestive of Shostakovich. It has a somewhat fugal character at times. It ends on a bell's resonance from which emerges the fourth movement. This is a Largo - bleak and high tensile - setting words by Shmuel Halkin on the subject of the Nazis' massacre of the Kiev Jews - a subject also addressed in Shostakovich 13 Babi Yar, written in 1962. Tenderness and sunlit misty fields float into vision . If you enjoy Britten Spring Symphony or the Mathias This Worldes Joie then this should appeal strongly. That said, its corrosive acid bites to the bone and deeper than either comparator work. This acerbic face is hardly softened by the optimism of many sections of V even if we are confronted with gentle invocatory hymns to a unity that arches over Volga, Mekong and Mississippi. Sun and mists mingle in seraphically murmured peace as the work closes.
The four movement Sinfonietta No. 1 is brilliant in the outer movements, dynamic, ethnic and jolly. This is folk-inspired material with Prokofiev's sharp accent and a Khachaturian whirl. It's not a work of the profundity of the symphonies. Its arena is concerned with the enjoyably recreational. The second movement is more poetic and partakes of the same tributes as the start of the finale of the Sixth Symphony. The jolly little Allegretto burbles smilingly in the first Klezmer echo—a touch of the dances of Kodaly. The Vorarlberg orchestra play it with élan and with a temperate yield.
Weinberg's symphonies 17-19 share a collective schema: The Threshold of War. All three were recorded in Soviet readings by Fedoseyev who has a long track record of championing Weinberg and is also the dedicatee of the Symphony No. 17. It starts with concentrated, unglamorous, glowing string writing. This is melancholy rather than morose, serious but laced with an apt drama and a generalized Semitic sway (7:03 in tr. 1). The second movement makes tense play of low-key fast-racing piano lines over which the woodwind quietly muses. There's a sense of urgency at one tier and of sorrowing reflection at the other. This gives way to gaunt exchanges between searingly imperious violins and brass figures. At 9.40 we hear Janáček-like string shrieks and the suggestion of the Dies Irae. There's even a hammered-out Mars-like triple forte. At 4.03 in III there's a touching balletic nostalgia but always with a diluted acerbic accent. The finale is a 17 minute Andante only a minute shorter than the second movement Allegro Molto. This drifts undemonstratively and with pensive inclination. After about half the finale's length a more bleakly victorious tone is struck with fanfares bruited and sirened about. Then comes an almost prayerful intimate musing (12:00) that evolves a tenderness (14:30) touched in by the celesta. The symphony ends with a protesting and brilliantly scythed gesture.
Live performances are preserved on these two discs so some coughs and atmosphere must be anticipated including the crack of chairs but without applause.
NEOS use their usual card-fold format to present these two CDs.
These recordings have been financed by the Institute that bears the name of the Polish poet and publisher Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855).
Neos will, I am sure, be giving us other provocative discoveries from Bregenz. The one most keenly anticipated is the Requiem which was played there on August 1, 2010.
Two deeply serious but only occasionally grim symphonies and an entertaining Sinfonietta.
Rob Barnett
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2011/Dec11/Weinberg_v12_neos111256.htm