Kremer’s Latest Weinberg Album on Accentus

courtesy of Naxos of America

I first became aware of the music of Mieczysław Weinberg when ECM New Series released its first two-CD set of performances by Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica colleagues. The first of those albums was released in January of 2014, prior to Kremer taking the Kremerata Baltica on a tour of six cities in the United States, one of which, fortunately, happened to be San Francisco. Since that time I have not been as thorough as I might have wished to keep up with recordings of Weinberg’s music, but I have tried to follow Kremer’s pursuit of the Weinberg catalog.

At the beginning of this year Accentus Music released Kremer’s latest Weinberg album. It includes the Opus 69 sonata for two violins, which Kremer performs with Madara Petersone, the Kremerata Baltica Concertmaster. The album couples this sonata with the Opus 67 violin concerto; and, unless I am mistaken, this was my first encounter with symphonic music for a full orchestra. The ensemble is the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Daniele Gatti. Both of these works were composed in 1959.

There is a tendency to associate Weinberg with Dmitri Shostakovich, who became a strong supporter of Weinberg. Born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Weinberg had been fortunate enough to flee to the Soviet Union at the outbreak of World War II, well aware of what the Nazis might do to him and his relatives. Shostakovich became a major influence; and, as their friendship matured, Weinberg was not shy about weaving his colleague’s themes into his own music. That said, I do not think I can account for Shostakovich’s “thematic presence” in either of the two selections on this album. On the other hand this was definitely the first time that I encountered full-throated instrumentation in a Weinberg composition; and I would say that the attentive listener will be as satisfied with the orchestral work as with the solo violin passages in the performance of Opus 67.

Opus 69, on the other hand, is a thoroughly engaging account of the textures of two violinists often bowing multiple strings. In the context of conditions under Joseph Stalin, life was far more tolerable with Nikita Khrushchev in charge. It was easier for Soviet musicians to perform in the West; and, in June of 1958, Shostakovich had been invited to receive an honorary Doctor of Music degree at Oxford. To the best of my knowledge, however, Weinberg never traveled outside Russia. Nevertheless, both Opus 67 and Opus 69 offer a freshness of rhetoric that may well have reflected the composer’s relief at not having to worry about Stalin any more.