Mieczyslaw (Moisei) Samuilovich Weinberg

On this 3CD set noted German violinist Linus Roth and the Argentinean piano virtuoso José Gallardo become the first pairing to perform a complete anthology of Mieczyslav Weinberg’s music for violin and piano. Weinberg had an unbelievably tragic life, full of struggle and pain. As a Polish Jewish composer during the 2nd World war he fled from the Nazi’s to Russia, got imprisoned by Stalin and was saved at the last minute by his good friend and colleague Dmitri Shostakovich.

The music of the 20th century Polish composer Mieczyslav Weinberg's is characterised by its depth of emotional content. As a Jew persecuted first by the Nazi’s, and later in Russia under the regime of Joseph Stalin, performance of his works was largely prohibited during his life. He is a great master of contrasts, and his compositions can move suddenly from the very dark, to the very bright, from shattering climaxes to a sound world that is barely audible.

In 1992 Linus Roth won First Prize at the German national competition "Jugend musiziert" and during his consequent studies he received support from Anne-Sophie Mutter and her foundation. In 2006 he received the Echo Klassik Award of the German Phonoacademy as "Best Newcomer" for his debut CD of sonatas by Brahms, Debussy, Ysaye and Mendelssohn on EMI Classics. Previous releases for Challenge Classics with pianist José Gallardo include recordings of music by Brahms (CC72382), and Schumann (CC72341).

This is the third instalment in the Pacifica Quartet’s highly anticipated, and already highly acclaimed four-volume CD survey of the complete Shostakovich string quartets: The Soviet Experience: String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich and his Contemporaries.

It is the first Shostakovich quartet cycle to include works by other important composers of the Soviet era, adding variety and perspective to the listening experience.

This superbly performed series of audiophile recordings, produced and engineered by multiple Grammy Award winner Judith Sherman, will appeal to everyone interested in great Russian music of the 20th century.

The Pacifica’s previous instalment, The Soviet Experience Volume II, received an extraordinary reception from critics. “The playing is nothing short of phenomenal, bringing new dimensions of interpretative depth and a subtle fusion of intensity and clarity. . . . When the series is complete, it looks set to be the one to own” (The Telegraph).

A product of Mieczysław Weinberg’s remarkable burst of creativity in the 1960s, the Eighth Symphony uses texts drawn from Julian Tuwim’s epic poem Polish Flowers which reflect on Poland’s troubled past and ominous future. Social inequities, poverty, cruelty in times of war and a final luminous vision of hope are eloquently expressed in one of Weinberg’s most personal and powerful artistic statements.

Mieczysław Weinberg’s 26 symphonies are seen today as a substantial continuation of the Russian tradition. Symphony No. 19 marks ‘Bright May’ as the month in which the Great Patriotic War came to an end, but expressed with ominous apprehension as well as celebration. The Banners of Peace subsumes traditional and revolutionary songs to create an extrovert work which avoids the bombast of propaganda. Gramophone has acclaimed the ‘understanding and fervour’ of Vladimir Lande’s ‘greatly superior’ conducting of Weinberg’s Symphony No. 6 (8572779).

The St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra was established in 1967 and until 1985 was known as the Orchestra of Ancient and Modern Music. Renowned soloists and conductors, including Yuri Temirkanov, Mariss Jansons, Svyatoslav Richter, and many others, have performed with the orchestra. In 2008, the American Vladimir Lande became the orchestra’s principal guest conductor. He conducted the opening concert of St Petersburg’s White Nights Festival in summer 2004. Since then, he has led notable orchestras in the United States, conducted the National Gallery Chamber Orchestra on an American tour, and served as conductor of the 64th American Music Festival.

Weinberg is sometimes mistakenly presumed to be in the shadow of his contemporary, Shostakovich, but in reality, his works are equally as important. He was born in Poland in 1919 and at the outbreak of WWII, fled to Russia where he studied composition. He was later called to Moscow by Shostakovich (who had heard his first symphony), and the two became great friends as well as contemporaries. This disc presents his chamber works with Weinberg himself joining the original members of the Borodin Quartet to perform the piano in his Quintet for piano, two violins, viola and cello (recorded in 1944), and is coupled here with his Quartet No. 8 for two violins, viola and cello in C minor.

Presented here are twenty-three charming miniatures written to meet the strong demand for children in the Soviet Union.

Although these pieces can be appreciated by children, they nevertheless are sophisticated and well worked compositions.

The 21 Easy Pieces for Piano provide an insightful harmonic microcosm of Weinberg’s style.

The Can-Can is a little “jeu d’esprit“ dedicated to Olga Reznitskaya, Weinberg’s second wife.

Vol. 6 marks the completion of the Mieczyslaw Weinberg String Quartet series on cpo. The interpretation of the Belgian Danel Quartet can only be described as a true windfall. This volume featuring the early Quartet No. 2 of 1939 and the last Quartet No. 17 from 1986 offers an overview of Weinberg’s entire oeuvre.

The extensive and highly significant oeuvre of Mieczyslaw Weinberg is gradually getting the recognition it deserves in the West. Cpo has championed the music of Weinberg and last year released a successful disc of his piano music with Elisaveta Blumina. If in his early piano compositions Weinberg created surprises with his unexpected musical maturity, then the chamber works for woodwinds selected here display even more emotional depth, seriousness, and drama. The artists on this disc skilfully master the astonishingly high technical demands of these pieces.

Rudolf Barshai’s influence as a conductor of Russian music is hard to overstate. Combining an inexhaustible work ethic with a commitment to perfecting every detail of a performance, he broke new ground with his studied interpretations.

His recordings – particularly of Russian music – were some of the 20th century’s most successful, met with both critical acclaim and widespread popularity; this collection celebrates his achievements, bringing together the best of Russian music from the 19th and 20th centuries. At the heart of the collection are Barshai’s own arrangements of music by Shostakovich and Prokofiev – his orchestrations of Shostakovich’s 10th String Quartet (heard here as the Chamber Symphony Op.118a) and Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, originally for piano, display a deep and intuitive understanding of orchestral balance and colour. Also included are Shostakovich’s inventive Symphony No.14 and movements from his intricate Op.87 cycle of Preludes and Fugues, as well as Weinberg’s Second Sinfonietta, written specifically for Barshai, and Lokshin’s mysterious Symphony No.7.

Barshai is heard here conducting the orchestra that he established – the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, which Shostakovich described as ‘the greatest chamber orchestra in the world’. Also featuring performances by Galina Vishnevskaya and Mark Reshetin, this 3-disc collection presents first-class recordings and performances in a set of impressive value.

This is the fourth disc in our series dedicated to the orchestral works of Mieczysław Weinberg, performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Thord Svedlund. The cello soloist is Claes Gunnarsson, one of Sweden’s leading cellists, who combines the post as Principal Cello of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra with a brilliant solo career.

After the Second World War, along with many other composers, Weinberg was subjected to a series of campaigns against so-called Formalism in the Soviet arts. As a result he turned his attention to concertante works, a medium less prone to censure than symphonies, sonatas, and quartets. The first movement of the Cello Concerto shares the tense, pensive lyricism found in the opening Nocturne of Shostakovich’s almost exactly contemporaneous First Violin Concerto. This later gives way to the rhythms of a habanera and some impassioned passages of Jewish klezmer, almost as if to guarantee a healthy quota of folk-rooted intonations (a required antidote to charges of Formalism), while at the same time allowing for deeper emotions too.

In the 1970s, Weinberg’s symphonic production went in two distinct but complementary directions. One of these was at the patriotic end of the Socialist Realist spectrum, while the other was much more abstract. Weinberg’s highly austere five-movement Symphony No. 20 clearly falls into the latter category – challenging, perplexing, and unpredictable. In the second scherzo Weinberg quotes from his opera The Portrait, based on a short story by Gogol. In fact, the finale perfectly captures the mood of the opera’s closing scenes, in which the artist protagonist realises that he has betrayed his calling, and sinks into delirium and eventual death.

A previous volume in our Weinberg series (CHSA5089: Symphony No. 3 and Suite No. 4 from The Golden Key) was nominated for a Grammy this year, in the Best Engineered Album category.