WEINBERG: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21 – Kremerata Baltica / Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla – DGG

by | May 29, 2019 | Classical CD Reviews | 1 comment

WEINBERG: Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra, Op. 30; Symphony No. 21, Op. 152 “Kaddish” – Kremerata Baltica/ Gidon Kremer, violin/ City of Birmingham Orchestra/ Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, soprano and conductor – DGG 483 6566 (2 CDs), 34:21; 54:38 (5/3/19) [Distr. by Universal] ****:

In the New Grove Dictionary of Music, Boris Schwarz calls Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) a “conservative modernist.” Others would argue the opposite; but, moreover, many wrongly see in Weinberg an artful imitator of Shostakovich when, in fact, Weinberg more often than not influenced Shostakovich to assume the mantle of opposition to anti-Semitic oppression that marked Stalinist Russia after the horrors of Nazism. Yet the “romantic” Weinberg claimed in conversation that he could always see “the bright light in dark circumstances,” courting a potent optimism in his relentless faith in God. Though the clamor of war permeates his musical oeuvre, Weinberg manages a fluent, classical melodic gift, colorful, diversely instrumental, and rife with both folk energies and contrapuntal craftsmanship.

A sweet transparency infiltrates the Symphony No. 2, Op. 30 (1946). Its most immediate predecessor seems to be Josef Suk’s E Major Serenade, Op. 6, although the writing in Weinberg has a more strident, angular beauty. Gidon Kremer’s concertante violin weaves within the textures, which do become fiercely contrapuntal and impassioned. In three movements, the Allegro moderato expands moodily, thinning in sonority to pose intimate letters, as we find in Janacek.  Moments that breathe an atmosphere of Bartok pass by, but the nostalgia expresses itself in an idiosyncratic, Slavic manner, deep in the basses. The violin plays a vaguely serpentine, alluring melody as a repeated trope, sliding high in register to dissipate in long periods.

The second movement, Adagio, opens with a mid-voice melody lit somewhere between Schumann and Dvorak, but elongated in the manner of Bruckner. High strings answer, almost sounding, in their muted double-stopped fashion, like distant horns. The moodiness resembles those mesto movements we find in Bartok, but the melody traverses a series of colored registers to become illuminated. A huge, elongated chord yields to Kremer’s solo violin, a song in the desert. A cello answers, and the music resumes in dark, layered hues. A light, dainty gavotte-like tune emerges over plucked strings. This tune, too, extends itself, moving to the violin’ slow utterance that squeaks in diminished tones into the aether.

The last movement, Allegretto, proceeds with that vague, Shostakovich ethos, but allowing moments of light to invade its gauzy texture. Pizzicato riffs play, a la Tchaikovsky or ironic Benjamin Britten. The strings divide for a deep-toned melody and layered ostinatos of some polyphonic intensity. A martial urgency overtakes the music, now easily attributable to the Shostakovich bass-fiddle sonority.  More pizzicato figures comprise the progression, while Weinberg juxtaposes various effects a la Bartok that coalesce into the violin’s solo meditation. The hazy last minute of music leaves us in a limbo not too far from Debussy’s Nuages, but sadder and more uneasy.

Although “composed” in 1991, the Symphony No. 21 of Weinberg had a long gestation period that involved Weinberg’s having created music for the dark film The Lord’s Prayer, which depicts the fate of a Jewish mother and her son who seek refuge in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII, only to meet their deaths. The Symphony evolves in one movement, subdivided into six sections, featuring a prominent solo violin part.  The melancholy, particularly Polish in character, sounds a monumental threnody, early quoting Chopin’s G minor Ballade. The opening solo violin hazily quotes the fifth song from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, “Mutter, ach Mutter, es hungert mich,” Oh Mother, I am hungry. The huge shifts in mood and dynamics embrace grim passages in chorale style, juxtaposed with klezmer melody set in diaphanous harmony with violin and piano (Georgis Osokins) and harp.

Akin to the Shostakovich Baba-Yar Symphony No. 13, the music bears a grave, tragic stamp of world catastrophe. Gidon Kremer calls the work “Mahler’s Eleventh Symphony.” The lone soprano voice dominates the musical context, supported by diverse chamber ensembles. The Allegro molto section projects the kind of frenetic, barbaric energy and grueling anguish we know from Shostakovich, tinged by brass, battery, and snare drum in layered, militant harmony. Agonized chords segue into the Largo section, sounding like demented Mussorgsky. Timbrel sounds rise up from the shattered world Weinberg has just wrought. Iurii Gavryiuk’s bass fiddle strikes some chords prior to random colors; then, the double bass indulges in a full cadenza that leads to brass intrusions and klezmer riffs in the clarinet (Oliver Jones). The dance becomes wild, Presto, a mad circus or spastic dance of death. Suddenly, Kremer’s lonely violin strikes “familiar” Jewish tones in concert with the clarinet and soft strings, leading to the sustained pedal of the Andantino.

Singular, staccato notes in various colors play against a mordant, Semitic chant. The three-note motto over the pedal assumes an eerie stasis, rife with Kafka-esque expectation. Weinberg imparts an anxious lyricism into this movement, a spirit similar to moods in Bartok or notes unstrung from Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. The music suddenly becomes expansive, epic, convulsive. Clarion chords, bells, and snare announce the ghastly descent into the Lento finale.

Even Tchaikovsky and Mahler’s slow last movements fail to prepare us for the “descent into the emotional maelstrom.” This ghoulish threnody has the soprano voice sing in the manner of a wordless vocalise, echoed in the clarinet over pedal string chords. The sense of a disembodied spirit, alternatively harrowing and playful – “la, la, la” – invoking the violin and clarinet to join the cry or cosmic grimace, as you will, becomes mesmerizing and unnerving. The piano comes back with the Chopin reference, while a string chamber ensemble quotes from Weinberg’s own Fourth String Quartet, Op. 20. The last few minutes assume an epilogue character: wordless voice become hysterical, pedal tones, brass and battery, and heavy punctuations that protest or rage against the dying of the light.

—Gary Lemco

 

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