CD ECM Records Gidon Kremer - Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies & Piano Quintet

2017

Gidon Kremer - vioara, dirijor
Andrei Pushkarev - percutie
Kremerata Baltica

Mieczysław Weinberg:
- Chamber Symphony No. 3 Op. 151
- Chamber Symphony No. 2 Op. 147
- Chamber Symphony No. 1 Op. 145
- Piano Quintet Op. 18
- Chamber Symphony No. 4 Op. 153

This double album, recorded in Vienna and in Riga in June 2015, includes all four of the chamber symphonies written in the last decade of Polish-born Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg’s life, plus a beautiful new arrangement – by Gidon Kremer and Kremerata percussionist Andrey Pushkarev – of the early Piano Quintet of 1944, heard here in a premiere recording. It is a recording which underlines the importance and originality of Weinberg’s music. For Gidon Kremer, “Weinberg has become a source of unlimited inspiration. No other composer has entered my own and Kremerata Baltica’s repertoire and program concepts with such intensity.” Weinberg’s chamber symphonies are Kremer says, “the most personal reflections of a great composer on his own life and his generation, like a diary of the most dramatic period of the 20th century.” This new recording – the second Kremerata Baltica album dedicated to Weinberg – is, Kremer feels, “the most valuable landmark in the orchestra’s discography since its birth.”
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As for the music, it was unknown beyond the Soviet bloc, where it was more familiar to musicians in private performances than it was to public audiences. Today, thanks largely to proselytism by Gidon Kremer and his friends, Weinberg is no longer obscure but a musical giant, waiting to be discovered. […] Kremer plays a mesmerising lead violin in the second chamber symphony, where my ear caught hints of Britten’s Peter Grimes, and Mirga Grazynte-Tyla leads the fourth chamber symphony, which adds clarinet and triangle to the string ensemble. I was not convinced on first hearing by Kremer’s orchestration of the riveting 1944 piano quartet, but it’s growing on me, as it should on you. The music is indelible. Weinberg is now a must-know composer.
Norman Lebrecht, Musical Toronto

This new set leaves you wondering why a composer of such consistently intense, emotionally direct music remained virtually unknown in the West for his entire career. […] through it all, Weinberg’s own voice comes through in long, soaring string lines, and textures that are invitingly sumptuous but also full of mystery. What makes the first three chamber symphonies especially fascinating is that they are early and late works simultaneously. In each case, Weinberg used a youthful chamber piece as a template, with trims, additions and reordering, along with broad rescoring. They superimpose an older man’s perspective on the youthful vision of the original work, yielding a moving balance of energy and world-weariness.
Allan Kozinn, The Wall Street Journal