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RECORD KEEPING | Mieczyslaw Weinberg Gets His Due

By Paul E. Robinson on November 21, 2016

Weinberg: Symphony No. 17 Op. 137 “Memory”. Suite for Orchestra. Siberian State Symphony Orchestra/Vladimir Lande. Naxos 8.573565. Total Time: 64:49.
Weinberg: Symphony No. 17 Op. 137 “Memory”. Suite for Orchestra. Siberian State Symphony Orchestra/Vladimir Lande. Naxos 8.573565. Total Time: 64:49.

Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) has only recently begun to receive the recognition he deserves. Born in Warsaw, Poland, he spent most of his life in Moscow, where he was encouraged in his career by Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), an older contemporary. Despite Shostakovich’s support, Weinberg remained largely unknown outside the Soviet Union, even in his later years. He spent five years in prison for alleged “Jewish subversion” and was only released when Stalin died in 1953. He wrote 22 symphonies and this new recording of Symphony No. 17 (“Memory”), written in 1984, was one of the major compositions of his later years.

Stylistically, Weinberg’s compositions can be compared to those of Shostakovich; that is to say, although he was composing into the 1990s, he remained a traditionalist, unaffected by the experimentalism of his era. Weinberg’s music is basically tonal, and his use of the orchestra is similar to that of Shostakovich in his symphonies. Like Shostakovich, he had a predilection for long and brooding symphonic movements with extended melodies, and often related his music to historical events in the Soviet Union. The title “Memory” for Symphony No. 17, for example, refers to recollections of World War II, or “The Great Patriotic War” as it is often called in Russia. Although the work has no detailed program, it does have an epigraph by the poet Anna Akhmatova, which provides some context:

My country you have regained
Your power and freedom!
But in the treasure-house of the people’s memory
There will always remain
The incinerated years of war

Symphony No. 17 was the first composition of a trilogy entitled “On the Threshold of War”, composed between 1984 and 1986. Forty-five minutes long, this symphony seems to me to run out of meaningful things to say well before the end. That said, the use of a pair of clarinets accompanied by pizzicato strings in an extended episode at the beginning of the last movement is a notable feature.

The filler item on this CD is the Suite for Orchestra (1950). According to the program notes by Richard Whitehouse, very little is known about this piece and this is its first recording. What we do know is that Weinberg was struggling during this period (the waning years of the Stalin era) and that he survived partly by writing music for the theatre and the circus. Not surprising then, that several of the movements in the Suite — the “Humoresque” and the “Galop” — sound very much like circus music. This piece certainly confirms the fact that Weinberg had a lighter side and when so inspired, he could write music that was quite entertaining.

Conductor Vladimir Lande is in the process of recording a seventeen-volume cycle (already released are recordings of the Symphonies 6, 12, 18 and 19) of Weinberg’s orchestral music for Naxos. The performances on this CD, of both the Symphony No. 17 and the Suite by the Siberian State Symphony Orchestra (Krasnoyarsk) are very good.

Not only is Weinberg’s music finally receiving the recognition it deserves by recording companies, it is also being programmed more often in both the United States and Canada: for example, his opera, The Passenger (1968), has been produced in both Houston (Houston Grand Opera, 2014) and Chicago (Lyric Opera, 2015); the TSO’s (Toronto Symphony Orchestra) Joaquin Valdepeñas, has recorded his Clarinet Sonata; and violinist Gidon Kremer is performing his Violin Concerto all over the continent this season.

#LUDWIGVAN

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