SACDs - Weinberg

Weinberg’s Requiem, composed for soprano, boys’ choir, chorus and orchestra is a huge and complex work. This series opens a door into the incredible richness of this forgotten composer’s works. His opera, The Passenger is being performed by ENO in September and October.

Following the success of the release of Weinberg’s opera The Passenger, NEOS is starting a series of Weinberg CDs/SACDs. All of the works, including symphonies, solo concertos, chamber music and his Requiem were performed at the Bregenz Festival in 2010 and recorded, so are available for this edition.

The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thord Svedlund is back with a new recording in Chandos’ ongoing series devoted to orchestral works by Weinberg. This is proving a benchmark series, one that has contributed significantly to Weinberg’s reappraisal in recent years. International Record Review described the CD of concertos by Weinberg (CHSA5064) as ‘one of the most sheerly exciting discs to come my way in a long time… a release of first importance’.

Born in Poland into a Jewish family, Mieczysław Weinberg fled before the German invasion in 1939 and spent most of his working life in the Soviet Union where he was a friend and neighbour of Shostakovich who did much to champion his music. He composed his Third Symphony between 1949 and 1950, shortly after the launch of Andrey Zhdanov’s ‘anti-formalism’ campaign which exhorted all Soviet composers to produce music for the People, i.e. in a broadly comprehensible language, preferably drawing on folk material. Weinberg obliged by placing a Belorussian folksong (‘What a Moon’) as a contrasting theme in the first movement, and a mazurka-like Polish folksong (‘Matek has died’) at the corresponding point in the second; the latter then transformed to produce the main theme of the finale.

This nod in the direction of official recommendations still was not enough to ensure a performance of the symphony. The premiere which had been scheduled to take place in Moscow was postponed. Later Weinberg was said to have discovered a number of ‘errors’ during rehearsals and therefore made the decision to cancel the performance. Perhaps this was simply an attempt to cover up official pressure to withdraw the work, perhaps not. In any case, Weinberg revisited the material ten years later, and the revised version was first heard in 1960 in the Great Hall of the Conservatory in Moscow, performed by the All-Union Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gauk.

Weinberg composed the ballet The Golden Key in 1954 – 55 on a popular tale by Aleksey Tolstoy, which mixes elements of the story of Pinocchio with that of Petrushka, hinting too at Jack and the Beanstalk. The music itself can be heard as a gallery of the great Russian masters of orchestration, Weinberg taking us on a journey of Tchaikovskian waltzes, Rimskian brass works, flashes of Stravinsky’s Petrushka in the winds and in some of the dance rhythms, and gorgeous adagios of the sort Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet taught Russian composers how to write.

The Chandos series of Weinberg orchestral works is proving a benchmark series, and contributed significantly to his reappraisal. The most recent album by the Gothenberg forces (CHSA5064) was described as’ one of the most exciting discs to come my way in a long time… A release of the first importance, then,’ (International Record Review)

Weinberg’s music is full of orchestral colour and rhythmic energy. Shostakovich was his most important influence, and a close friend, describing him as ‘one of the most outstanding composers of the present day’. His music is reminiscent of Shostakovich’s, but with strong elements of Jewish folk music and klezmer.

Weinberg composed his First Symphony, a full-scale, four-movement work in G minor in 1942, in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. He had been driven from Warsaw by the Nazi invasion in 1939 and found refuge in Minsk. Then when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, he had to flee again, this time by train via Moscow to Tashkent, where large where large numbers of the Russian artistic intelligentsia joined him in evacuation. Those he met there included the woman who was to become Weinberg’s first wife, Nataliya Vovsi-Mikhoels, daughter of one the most famous Russian-Jewish actors, Solomon Mikhoels. Throughout his life Weinberg understandably considered the Soviet Union his salvation, and it should come as no surprise that his First Symphony is dedicated to the Red Army, at the time of composition locked in deadly combat with the aggressors who were ravaging both his homeland and his adoptive country.

Symphony No.1 is coupled with the later Seventh Symphony, composed in 1964 for harpsichord and strings. By 1964 Weinberg had truly settled in the Soviet Union, and his work is much more settled as a result. The work conveys certain piquancy for its use of harpsichord work and was premiered by and dedicated to Rudolf Barshai.

In this the fifth album of the series Thord Svedlund, a passionate devotee of Weinberg, conducts the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

Little known in the West and victim of anti-Semitic ostracism in the former USSR, the name of Weinberg seems to be slowly emerging from the shadow of Shostakovich, his protector and friend. His chamber music includes 17 quartets, the most experimental body of his work along with his cello sonatas, written with Rostropovich in mind. Ongoing collections of his works are now appearing:Toccata's song cycle, a symphony cycle on Bis and a string quartet cycle for CPO, all of which have been enthusiastically received.