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\n12\/2011<\/p>\n
Infotext:<\/p>\n
Bei der Weinberg-Retrospektive der Bregenzer Festspiele 2010 stand die szenische Urauff\u00fchrung seiner Oper \u00bbDie Passagierin\u00ab im Mittelpunkt, doch die Auff\u00fchrung von \u00fcber zwanzig weiteren Werken schuf einen Einblick in den unglaublichen Reichtum des \u0152uvres dieses vergessenen Komponisten. Weinberg f\u00fchlte sich zum Komponieren gezwungen, um damit sein \u00dcberleben vom Holocaust, als Einziger seiner Familie, zu rechtfertigen. Die dadurch entstandenen gro\u00dfartigen symphonischen und kammermusikalischen Werke sind voller Melancholie und Trotz. Wir danken NEOS daf\u00fcr, dass nun auch Andere an der Wiederentdeckung dieses inspirierten und wichtigen Komponisten teilhaben k\u00f6nnen.<\/i><\/p>\n
David Pountney<\/i><\/p>\n
Symphonie Nr. 17 \u00bbErinnerung\u00ab<\/b>\u00a0op. 137 (1982\u20131984)<\/p>\n
Seine in den 1980er Jahren entstandenen Symphonien Nr. 17 bis 19 b\u00fcndelte Mieczys\u0142aw Weinberg zu einer Trilogie. Der \u00fcbergreifende Titel Die Schwelle des Krieges bezieht sich auf den Zweiten Weltkrieg und die damit verbundenen Erinnerungen des j\u00fcdisch-polnischen Komponisten, der in der Sowjetunion eine neue Heimat fand. Der Symphonie Nr. 17 ist ein Motto der russischen Dichterin Anna Achmatowa (1898\u20131966) vorangestellt.<\/p>\n
Wie Weinberg litt Achmatowa unter dem Stalinregime und wurde erst sp\u00e4t rehabilitiert. \u00dcbersetzt lauten ihre Verse: \u00bbMein Land, du hast wiedergewonnen deine Macht und deine Freiheit! Aber in der Schatzkammer der Erinnerung des Volkes werden immer bewahrt bleiben die verbrannten Jahre des Krieges.\u00ab Das 1982 bis 1984 komponierte Werk ist eine reine Instrumentalsymphonie und verwendet keine Vokalparts \u2013 wie etwa die Symphonie Nr. 18. Als Einleitung zur gro\u00dfen Trilogie kommt ihr eine besondere Bedeutung zu.<\/p>\n
Wie so oft bei Weinberg ist das Orchester sehr gro\u00df besetzt. Nur das einleitende Allegro sostenuto besitzt eine schlankere Instrumentation. Die Streicher stimmen einen traurigen g-Moll-Gesang an. Es ist die im Symphonietitel gemeinte Erinnerung an den Krieg, die in diesem Anfang mitschwingt. Ruheloser und mit Dies irae-Zitaten der lateinischen Totenmesse entfacht der zweite Satz das Feuer militanter Konflikte. Am Ende beschwichtigt eine einsame Solo-Violine die Massen und leitet zur hoffnungsvollen Coda \u00fcber.<\/p>\n
Weinbergs Kompositionstechnik ist auch in der Symphonie Nr. 17 ungemein facettenreich. Als Beispiel darf der dritte Satz gelten. In ihm verschmelzen barocke Kontrapunktik und traditionelle Scherzo-Robustheit. Das Trio verhilft den Holzbl\u00e4sern zu geh\u00f6riger Wirkung. Ebenso knapp wie effektiv ist die Coda gestaltet. Was nach diesem raschen Satz folgt, ist ein langsamer Abgesang. Klarinetten und H\u00f6rner geben dem finalen Andante einen \u00bbromantischen\u00ab Anstrich.<\/p>\n
Die N\u00e4he zu Mahler oder Bruckner liegt auf der Hand (so etwa in den ged\u00e4mpften Blechbl\u00e4sern gegen Ende). Eingebettet ist ein kammermusikalischer Abschnitt f\u00fcr Solo-Streicher und Celesta. Der grandiose G-Dur-Schluss wirkt wie die Musikalisierung der ersten beiden Zeilen aus Achmatowas Motto. Doch nur oberfl\u00e4chlich betrachtet endet das Werk im Sinne des \u00bbSozialistischen Realismus\u00ab. Im positiven Ende versteckt ist auch der Sieg des K\u00fcnstlers \u00fcber das Stalinregime und jegliche Kunstdiktatur.<\/p>\n
Zwar verfolgte Weinberg zeitlebens einen unpolitischen Sonderweg, doch die sp\u00e4ten Symphonien entstanden auch vor dem Hintergrund von Glasnost und Perestroika. Andererseits geh\u00f6rte der Komponist einer absterbenden Generation an. Solche Werke h\u00e4tten \u00bbihren Platz inzwischen in der Rumpelkammer\u00ab, denn diese Musik entspr\u00e4che nicht \u00bbden gegenw\u00e4rtigen Moden\u00ab, bemerkte Weinberg 1988 ebenso ironisch wie selbstkritisch.<\/p>\n
Nach Russland drang der Geist der Neuen Musik. Die jungen Komponisten hinterfragten solche gro\u00dfformatigen Symphonien generell. Sie galten als Ballast des Kalten Krieges, als Kunstformen einer vergangenen \u00c4ra. Im Westen erntete Weinbergs Musik ab Mitte der 1990er Jahre hingegen gro\u00dfe Anerkennung. Gelobt wurden ihre hohe Qualit\u00e4t und Weinbergs gleichwertiger Rang zwischen Prokofjew und Schostakowitsch.<\/p>\n
Matthias Corvin<\/p>\n
Programm:<\/p>\n
Symphony No.\u200917 \u201cMemory\u201d
\n<\/b>op.\u2009137 (1982\u20131984)<\/p>\n
[01]\u00a0Allegro sostenuto<\/b>\u00a010:13
\n[02]\u00a0Allegro molto<\/b>\u00a018:41
\n[03]\u00a0Allegro moderato<\/b>\u00a007:26
\n[04]\u00a0Andante<\/b>\u00a016:38<\/p>\n
total time: 53:01<\/p>\n
Wiener Symphoniker
\nVladimir Fedoseyev, conductor<\/p>\n
Live Recording<\/i><\/p>\n
Pressestimmen:<\/p>\n
\n12\/2011<\/p>\n
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\u2019s opera\u00a0The Passenger<\/i>\u00a0now enjoying an eight night run at the ENO. The ambitious\u00a0Requiem<\/i>\u00a0was also performed.\u00a0The Passenger<\/i>\u00a0(1967-8) is based on a disturbing story in which a former Auschwitz guard by chance meets one of \u2018her prisoners\u2019 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\u00a0The Passenger<\/i>\u00a0in Wielki Teatr, Warsaw and Teatro Real, Madrid. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Weinberg, also shown in previous times in Russianised form as \u2018Moishe Vainberg\u2019 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 \u2018Vainberg Edition\u2019 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\u2019s revivification 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 Quartets are: Volume 1: 7773132; Volume 2: 7773922; Volume 3: 7773932; Volume 4: 7773942; Volume 5: 7775662. The Piano Quintet is on a Nimbus disc.<\/p>\n
The Sixth Symphony – unlike the 17th<\/i>\u00a0– 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\u2019s parents and sister died in the Warsaw ghetto and that the symphony was contemporaneous with the Cuban missile crisis. The music is grave and serious however within this consistent intensity Weinberg\u2019s ideas range freely and in splendid and ear-intriguing variety. There\u2019s 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\u2019s resonance from which emerges the fourth movement. This is a Largo \u2013 bleak and high tensile \u2013 setting words by Shmuel Halkin on the subject of the Nazis\u2019 massacre of the Kiev Jews \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
The four movement Sinfonietta No. 1 is in the outer movements brilliant, dynamic, ethnic and jolly. This is folk-inspired material with Prokofiev\u2019s sharp accent and a Khachaturian whirl. It\u2019s 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 tributaries as the start of the finale of the Sixth Symphony. The jolly little Allegretto burbles smilingly in the first Klezmer echo \u2013 a touch of the dances of Kodaly. The Vorarlberg orchestra play it with \u00e9lan and with a temperate yield.<\/p>\n
Weinberg\u2019s 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 generalised 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\u2019s 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 Jan\u00e1\u010dek-like string shrieks and the suggestion of the Dies Irae. There\u2019s even a hammered-out Mars-like triple forte. At 4.03 in III there\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Live performances are preserved on these two discs so some coughs and atmosphere must be anticipated including the creak of chairs but without applause.<\/p>\n
NEOS use their usual card-fold format to present these two CDs.<\/p>\n
These recordings have been financed by the Institute that bears the name of the Polish poet and publisher Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855).<\/p>\n
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 1 August 2010.<\/p>\n
Two deeply serious but only occasionally grim symphonies and an entertaining Sinfonietta.<\/p>\n
Rob Barnett<\/i><\/p>\n