Mieczyslaw Weinberg Russian Piano Music Series (mclachlan) II

The music of Mieczys?aw Weinberg continues to be issued, and continues to impress. Like his British counterpart, York Bowen, Weinberg was a composer trapped in time and place, and it is good that their very different musics are now coming to the fore with such regularity. One of the wonderful things about this disc, aside from the committed, intense playing of the instrumentalists, is the sound: crisp and clear, with only a very little reverb, which brings the sound of the instruments into sharp focus and makes the listener pay attention to the music.

Every five years the Soviet Union celebrated the anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution with large-scale public events, to which the country’s leading artists were expected to contribute. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, like his friend Shostakovich, enjoyed mixed fortunes with his efforts. The symphonic poem Dawn (Zarya), Op. 60, dedicated to the fortieth anniversary of the Revolution, seems to have remained unperformed during his lifetime, despite its ideologically irreproachable content. Its première was finally given in the BBC studios in Manchester, on 15 May 2019, by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgards.

It's a wonderful treat to find an album whose interest rests equally on its musical as well as historical merits. As such, the present two-disc sets of the complete Rachmaninoff concertos and Paganini Rhapsody cannot be beat. The three pianists heard here – Richter, Zak, and Oborin – represent the pinnacle of postwar Russian pianists. Richter is most likely the one still known to the majority of American listeners. But Zak (who was immensely influential not only as a performer but as a pedagogue) and Oborin (who was the first winner of the Chopin Competition) were recognized equally during their lifetimes. All three had a profound and obvious command of Rachmaninoff, and the performances heard here clearly demonstrate this fact.

After Weinberg and his wife were able to move to Moscow in 1943 with the help of Shostakovich, he wrote the Piano Trio op.24 in 1945. The present recording is based on a copy of the manuscript from 1945, which contains all of the original ideas about the dynamics, phrasings and peculiarities of the composition. Until shortly before his death in 1996, Weinberg’s works were regularly performed with great enthusiasm by Russian artists and now, they slowly but increasingly are reaching the international concert stage. His Piano Trio, like his other numerous works, shows his immense mastery of all compositional forms, genres and styles - always shaped by events in his own fateful life.

The trumpet has had many concertos written for it by composers from the Soviet era and beyond. Appealing in its unabashed melodies and colourfully nostalgic feel, Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto became popular in the West, while Weinberg’s emotive Trumpet Concerto in B flat major was summed up by Shostakovich as a ‘symphony for trumpet and orchestra’. Shostakovich’s own playful Concerto No. 1, Op. 35 is recorded here with Timofei Dokschizer’s extended trumpet part, bringing it closer to the Baroque ‘double concerto’ model that the composer may initially have intended.

Following the success of the Weinberg Symphonies 2 & 21 with conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Deutsche Grammophon now features chamber music by Mieczysław Weinberg under the direction of Gidon Kremer.
Included among others are his “Three Pieces for Violin and Piano”, which Weinberg completed in the winter of 1934/35 when he was only 15 years old and had not yet received any compositional training. What connects Weinberg’s works is not only their compositional perfection, but above all their constant commitment to beauty. It is a confession that in Weinberg’s music is above all pain and suffering.

The three sonatas of Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (written in 1964, 1967, and 1979) are among the most richly creative and technically challenging 20th century works for solo violin, and their radical expressivity draws the listener in. Gidon Kremer, a key figure in the revival of interest in Weinberg's music, ranks these pieces with the Bart¢k sonata for their challenges and rewards. This edition of the Weinberg violin sonatas is issued on the occasion of Kremer's 75th birthday.

The East-West Chamber Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Yuri Bashmet International Music Festival and is made up of concertmasters from leading orchestras and competition laureates. On this, their debut recording, they celebrate the centenary of Mieczysław Weinberg’s birth. Weinberg’s Chamber Symphonies reflect his creativity and the dramatic times in which he lived—the formal lucidity and directness of the First and the elegiac Third—both derived from string quartets composed in the shadow of the Second World War.