Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996)

[jlaurson]

Thanks, Jens. I'll investigate the Borodin as well. BTW, have you heard the Arc Ensemble performance on RCA? What do you think of this one?

Yes, I have... for starters I love their couplings... and their other recordings, like those of Braunfels and Busch.

I haven't got a comparative memory of the Haenssler and the RCA, but very positive impressions of both.

The Quintet op.18—one of the unequivocally great chamber pieces of that time—is available on perhaps the most famous Weinberg recording of them all: that of the dedicatees Borodin Quartet together with the pianist-composer on Melodiya. But it can also be had with the superb ARC Ensemble (RCA), the Vilnius String Quartet (Delos), the Kopelman Quartet (Nimbus), and the Szymanowski Quartet (Hänssler). That would make it difficult for the EOS-Quartett Wien et al. to compete even if it were better than it is. As it is, it might be the only recording in this edition that can't garner a recommendation.

[Karl Henning]

Weinberg is an important composer for me, I prefer his writing to Shostakovich's.  But I listen to almost nothing beyond the string quartets.  Symphonies are not my cup of tea, not for any composer, so the next logical step for me would be something from among his other chamber music, most likely the piano quintet.

Interesting!  I always enjoyed playing in orchestra.  OTOH, I have also always played more frequently in chamber combinations/environments.  I guess I just like it all . . . .

Probably I should investigate the quartets before (or more than) the symphonies, and the pf quintet first of all.  It's the damnedest thing, I have a passel of Weinberg CDs wish-listed, but at press time it is still true that the only music of his I presently own fits on two CDs (the Pacifica Qt recording of the Sixth Qt, and the Vc Cto/20^th Symphony disc).

[snyprrr]

I just did not like the Piano Quintet, which I think was coupled with the SQ 12, which I also didn't like much. Besides the first movement of the Cello Concerto, I haven't heard those Myaskovsky-Shostakovich bleed-your-heart melodies.

Either the PQ or the SQ was much more agressive than I expected. Is their anything like Shosty's SQ 6?

[jlaurson]

I just did not like the Piano Quintet, which I think was coupled with the SQ 12, which I also didn't like much. Besides the first movement of the Cello Concerto, I haven't heard those Myaskovsky-Shostakovich bleed-your-heart melodies.

Either the PQ or the SQ was much more agressive than I expected. Is their anything like Shosty's SQ 6?

With Weinberg, don't expect ANYTHING to be less aggressive than either your expectations or DSCH.

Then, with that attitude, listen to the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes (for violin and piano--for example on the Roth/Gallardo set.

[kyjo]

The Piano Quintet is a masterpiece and a work which I hold in the highest regard. I've had more difficulty warming to his SQs, though, especially the elliptical later ones.

So, what is everyone's favorite Weinberg symphony? Mine is no. 5 (with 6 following a close second). An incredibly powerful, often violent work.

[Karl Henning]

I've only heard one, so I recuse myself from the question of "favorite symphony"      0:)

[vandermolen]

The Piano Quintet is a masterpiece and a work which I hold in the highest regard. I've had more difficulty warming to his SQs, though, especially the elliptical later ones.

So, what is everyone's favorite Weinberg symphony? Mine is no. 5 (with 6 following a close second). An incredibly powerful, often violent work.

These are exactly my thoughts too.

[kyjo]

These are exactly my thoughts too.

[amw]

Weinberg is an important composer for me, I prefer his writing to Shostakovich's.

Interesting. I also prefer Weinberg to Shostakovich, and I know much is made of the similarities and inter-influences between them.

But personally (and perhaps I'm over-exaggerating this due to my preferences) I don't find Weinberg sounds very much like Shostakovich at all. Sometimes Shostakovich sounds a bit like Weinberg. Other times there are all these little Shostakovichy bits in Weinberg that sound oddly out of place, like he was trying to write something like Shostakovich but failed. The emotional world is often very different—no hollow nervous humour or ironic triviality, very little tub-thumping and bombast, hardly any traces of socialist realism. Technically as well the music seems different, often very modal & diatonic and almost cantorial (the opening theme of the Cello Concerto sounds straight out of a synagogue) in a way that rarely ever happens in Shostakovich without being distorted by his trademark "DSCH" diminished fourths and Prokofievan sudden shifts into remote keys, other times harsher & more astringent than anything in Shostakovich save perhaps the late quartets, but in a more vital Bartókian way rather than the emotionally spent and empty feeling of e.g. DSCH's 13th or 15th.

I'm still not sure where to "put" Weinberg—there are bits that remind me of Kodály, bits that remind me of Britten, bits that remind me of Berg, etc. Perhaps the problem is that to some extent I've not yet found "the" Weinberg piece yet, I've heard a bunch of String Quartets, a Trumpet Concerto and some other concertos, 24 Preludes for solo cello, a Piano Quintet and a few Symphonies, but either haven't listened very closely or something, since they were all good, just nothing really stood out as so amazingly good I'll recommend it to everyone. May have to revisit the quartets, I don't even remember which ones I have at this point.

[Mirror Image]

Interesting. I also prefer Weinberg to Shostakovich, and I know much is made of the similarities and inter-influences between them.

But personally (and perhaps I'm over-exaggerating this due to my preferences) I don't find Weinberg sounds very much like Shostakovich at all. Sometimes Shostakovich sounds a bit like Weinberg. Other times there are all these little Shostakovichy bits in Weinberg that sound oddly out of place, like he was trying to write something like Shostakovich but failed. The emotional world is often very different—no hollow nervous humour or ironic triviality, very little tub-thumping and bombast, hardly any traces of socialist realism. Technically as well the music seems different, often very modal & diatonic and almost cantorial (the opening theme of the Cello Concerto sounds straight out of a synagogue) in a way that rarely ever happens in Shostakovich without being distorted by his trademark "DSCH" diminished fourths and Prokofievan sudden shifts into remote keys, other times harsher & more astringent than anything in Shostakovich save perhaps the late quartets, but in a more vital Bartókian way rather than the emotionally spent and empty feeling of e.g. DSCH's 13th or 15th.

I'm still not sure where to "put" Weinberg—there are bits that remind me of Kodály, bits that remind me of Britten, bits that remind me of Berg, etc. Perhaps the problem is that to some extent I've not yet found "the" Weinberg piece yet, I've heard a bunch of String Quartets, a Trumpet Concerto and some other concertos, 24 Preludes for solo cello, a Piano Quintet and a few Symphonies, but either haven't listened very closely or something, since they were all good, just nothing really stood out as so amazingly good I'll recommend it to everyone. May have to revisit the quartets, I don't even remember which ones I have at this point.

I very much enjoyed reading this post except for the parts where you seem like you want to deride Shostakovich's music for no good reason. Emotionally empty? Hollow? Triviality? We're obviously listening to different composers because Shostakovich is none of these things and if he was, it's simply because he had the Soviet authorities breathing down his neck making sure he wasn't up to any funny business. Shostakovich did what he had to do to survive in that environment as did Weinberg. These composers lives weren't exactly a picnic. You don't like Shostakovich that's fine, but don't use the Weinberg thread as a platform for yourself.

Shostakovich was one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century. History acknowledges this and has continued to acknowledge it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

[HenselFlaeder]

I think i remember hearing some nice things in the Trumpet Concerto. I believe it has a searing slow movement.

[Mirror Image]

I think i remember hearing some nice things in the Trumpet Concerto. I believe it has a searing slow movement.

Yep and it's quite moving too with some haunting lyrical moments. I really like the whole work a lot though.

[amw]

I very much enjoyed reading this post except for the parts where you seem like you want to deride Shostakovich's music for no good reason. Emotionally empty? Hollow? Triviality?

Yes, I suppose it's easy to read those bits in a negative way. Hollowness, intentional banality, emptiness, bleakness, etc, can however be used to great effect, and at his best, Shostakovich uses those tropes to create works and passages that can be extremely disquieting and linger long in the memory. To take an example from a piece I like, the main theme of the finale of his Piano Trio No. 2 is an extremely "trivial", even silly theme. It uses only three notes!



A short while later a new, more dramatic phrase begins, and we think the music is starting to go somewhere; the melody begins to emphasize the tritone and major sixth of the C-natural root, creating a diminished seventh:



which builds...



and builds...



and nothing happens. The theme goes right back to where it started:



Here at the beginning of the movement this strikes us as a stroke of Haydnesque wit, if at all. An extremely simple theme that always seems like it's going to develop into something more interesting, yet if anything gets steadily less interesting and more repetitive as it goes on. (Like most "trivial" music, it is in many ways very sophisticated, and probably required a fair bit of sketching and drafting to come up with. The main theme of Beethoven's Ninth was even worse. :> ) But now Shostakovich leads us into the "meat" of the movement by introducing first a Jewish dance-tune (side note: he also got to know Weinberg around this time, I wonder if the increasing presence of Jewish themes and motifs in Shostakovich is related to that?) which actually manages to get off the ground, unlike the bumbling, halting first theme, and then subjecting both themes to an intense development that culminates in a climax of great violence and a return to highly oppressive, cold, bleak material from the first movement.

After that it settles down for what it doesn't make a lot of sense to call a "recapitulation". The first theme comes back, but though the notes are the same and the presentation is not dissimilar, the mood is completely different. The weight of the entire (quite substantial, 11+ minutes on my recording) movement, and to some extent the whole piece, rests on this return, and the trivial, silly, repetitive first theme now sounds more stuck in a rut, grounded, unable to escape. Not emotional uplifting or transfiguration, not utmost despair and self-pity, just humming the same tune nervously to yourself over and over again while continually glancing over your shoulder at Nazi concentration camp guards/Comrade Stalin/your own personal insecurities. Under despotism life, and the continual abrasion of the soul, goes on.

Here Shostakovich allows himself something he later looked less kindly on, and relents, letting the piece come to a stop in a becalmed (if not actually consolatory) E major, but a few decades later he'd probably have opted instead for a slow fadeout with the sounds of marching gradually disappearing into the distance (compare the 2nd Cello Concerto, etc), and the piece would not have particularly suffered for it. Part of the whole point of Shostakovich is that the trivial, banal, everyday things wear you down so much more than the grand catastrophes.

Anyway... *cough* this is the Weinberg thread, and that whole thing I just described... doesn't strike me as the sort of thing Weinberg ever really tried to do. He responded to the pressures of Soviet life rather differently (as everyone did).

[Mirror Image]

Thanks for explaining yourself, amw. Interesting post.

[vandermolen]

I think i remember hearing some nice things in the Trumpet Concerto. I believe it has a searing slow movement.

The old Kondrashin recording of Symphony No 5 on Russian Disc contained the Trumpet Concerto also. A wonderful disc but often absurdly priced on Amazon now.

[Mirror Image]

The old Kondrashin recording of Symphony No 5 on Russian Disc contained the Trumpet Concerto also. A wonderful disc but often absurdly priced on Amazon now.

I would LOVE to have that Kondrashin recording or even the Melodiya reissue of Kondrashin's performances of the 4th and 6th. I want both!!!!

[milk]

I went ahead and purchased this recording tonight. I haven't any of the other releases in the series, nor have I noticed any mention of it here. These works are very approachable. I'm tempted to make a playlist to which I can add this, Schumann, Debussy, Villa-Lobos, and any other childhood musical themes I find in my musical collection.   

[jlaurson]

I went ahead and purchased this recording tonight. I haven't any of the other releases in the series, nor have I noticed any mention of it here. These works are very approachable. I'm tempted to make a playlist to which I can add this, Schumann, Debussy, Villa-Lobos, and any other childhood musical themes I find in my musical collection.

There's not a release of this pianist in Weinberg that I don't think is underpowered and fainthearted. Sadly. But fortunately the Olympia recordings have been re-issued on divine art. http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/01/best-recordings-of-2012-2.html

[The new erato]

The old Kondrashin recording of Symphony No 5 on Russian Disc contained the Trumpet Concerto also. A wonderful disc but often absurdly priced on Amazon now.

And he's calles Vainberg on it. I just checked my copy......

[Mirror Image]

I was just reading through Weinberg's Wikipedia article and I noticed something quite striking written by Alexander Ivashkin in relation to Weinberg sounding a lot like Shostakovich:

Alexander Ivashkin has argued that composers such as Weinberg damaged not only their reputations, but also that of Shostakovich himself: "these works only served to kill off Shostakovich's music, to cover it over with a scab of numerous and bad copies".

[Taken from Wikipedia]

What do you guys make of this? And, how, in your own opinions, is Weinberg different from Shostakovich? What are the characteristics of Weinberg's own style in relation to Shostakovich's?