Symphonic thinking dominated Mieczysław Weinberg’s final decade, and these chamber symphonies are part of an interrelated sequence that reworks and cites earlier pieces. The Second Chamber Symphony draws on a string quartet from 1944, reflecting the sombre and fatalistic tone of the period. The Fourth Chamber Symphony was Weinberg’s last completed work, and uses a haunting chorale melody that he once referred to as a constant presence throughout his creativity. Weinberg’s First and Third Chamber Symphonies(8.574063) ‘blossom in vividly colorful performances’ (Pizzicato).

If Mieczyslaw Weinberg had lived for another decade or so after his death in 1996, he would have seen his status change from poorly known outlier to general acceptance as one of the major twentieth-century composers. His violin works have likewise been recognized as major additions to the repertoire. Since Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills began what will be a four-volume survey of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s music for violin and piano, other musicians have discovered and recorded many of these masterworks, but on its completion this cycle will still be the first to record all of Weinberg’s works for solo violin and violin and piano.

REVIEW:

The most ingratiating music comes right at the start, with the first movement Allegro moderato of the Violin Sonata No.3 from 1947. Its four minutes begin with a lyrical theme of varying phrase lengths which the players keep flowing as it were “in one breath”. The fugato style second subject is a perkier counterweight and the sonata form progression is coherently delivered, and the lowish emotional temperature feels just right as there are two movements each twice the length of this one to come. The Andantino is cooler still, and David Fanning’s booklet note informs us that the additional phrase for that marking molto rubato and all other expression marks were removed by Weinberg, so that the players could find their own way of presenting the flexibility he wanted. He could certainly trust this pair whose interpretation makes much of the movement sound questing and improvisatory.

The Allegretto cantabile finale has clear Shostakovich chamber music echoes, as Fanning mentions, specifically the klezmer elements. In fact, in his book on Weinberg, Fanning cites this work of being “one of the comparatively few…that bear out the criticism that (Weinberg) occasionally sought shelter in the shadow of Shostakovich” and mentions “near-literal borrowings”. Nonetheless most of it is still quite individual, not least the slow violin cadenza that closes the work, in which Yuri Kalnits is very commanding.

The other violin and piano sonata here, Weinberg’s sixth and last, was discovered only in 2007, twenty years after the composer’s death, and given the opus number 136bis. Its fifteen-minute single movement, on the template Moderato - Allegro – Moderato – Allegro, opens with a long violin solo. David Fanning notes its similarity to the bell theme in the finale of Rachmaninov’s First Suite for Two Pianos, and although bells often resound in Russian music from Boris Godunov to Stravinsky’s late Requiem Canticles, not many are found in a violin solo! The piano does not enter until two minutes in, and then has its own long solo at the end of this opening Moderato. This is almost texture as three-part form – solo violin, piano and violin duo, then solo piano. Whether playing together or alone, Kalnits and Csanyi-Wills hold the attention throughout this spare and haunting piece.

Arguably the most important work on the disc is the one-movement Sonata No. 3 for Solo Violin from 1979, dedicated to Weinberg’s father. Its nearly twenty-four minute continuous span make for a demanding listen, but Kalnits’s excellent performance makes a persuasive case.

-- MusicWeb International

.Born in Warsaw but forced to flee to Minsk and then Tashkent before finally settling in Moscow, Mieczyslaw Weinberg was, as Shostakovich remarked, �one of the most outstanding composers of the present day� and a close friend of the older composer. His Cello Sonatas, the second of which was composed for Rostropovich, make masterful use of the cello�s expressive capabilities, while his sonatas for solo cello have been likened in importance to the suites of J.S. Bach. The first and third of these in particular, dedicated to Rostropovich, are significant contributions to the instrument�s repertoire.

The best proof that Mieczyslaw Weinberg's music has fortunately and deservedly been experiencing a renaissance in recent years is another album devoted entirely to the person of this composer. This album entitled Weinberg � Sonatas for Violin and Piano was created on the initiative of violinist Michal Kowalczyk and pianists Dagmara Niedziela and Mateusz Rozek. The focus of the artists' interpretative vision is the multidimensionality of the composer's sound language, resulting from both the composer's tragic life experiences and him being rooted in three different cultural traditions. Each of the sonatas featured on the album seems to fully resonate with the events that were accompanying it's creation in terms of emotional expression. The recorded works, although they have just begun to make a regular appearance in concert programs, are undoubtedly a staple of the 20th-century chamber music.

Pieter Wispelwey is finally back! Research on Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s music is very much ongoing, and several previously unknown works have been discovered in recent years. Perhaps most surprising of these is the Cello Concertino op. 43bis. The Fantasy for cello and orchestra op. 53 was written a few years later, during one of the darkest periods of Weinberg’s life. The Chamber Symphony no.4 is Weinberg’s final completed work. He wrote it in April-May of 1992, by which time he was housebound with the illness that would ultimately claim his life. The work is scored for string orchestra with an obbligato clarinet.

Cellist Edgar Moreau, with the WDR Sinfonieorchester and conductor Andris Poga, performs two concertante works from the mid-20th century: Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Concerto in C minor (1956), and Henri Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain... (1970). Both were premiered by the great Mstislav Rostropovich, which creates a special link with Moreau: in 2014 in Paris, he won the Young Soloist Prize in the Rostropovich Cello Competition. In recent years, interest has grown in the music of the Polish-born Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg, who was mentored by Shostakovich. The title Tout un monde lointain... evokes a distant world, and Dutilleux's five-movement work does indeed take us to a very different place from Weinberg's, drawing inspiration from the sensuous poems of Charles Baudelaire. Praising Edgar Moreau's last Erato album, Transmission, Gramophone wrote: "His tone is beautiful, his phrasing rapt, and the intensity of his delivery is magnified in the immediacy of his presence in the sound picture."

First complete set of these works on one disc. Marina Tarasova has established herself as an authority in the music of Weinberg whose centenary comes up in December 2019. Her highly acclaimed recording of the concertino on Northern Flowers has been sensationally received