The music of
Mieczyslaw Weinberg is an increasingly common presence in recording catalogs, and this new release from the
BBC Philharmonic and conductor
John Storgards makes as good a place as any to start with this fascinating composer, who was befriended and admired by
Shostakovich and suffered many of the same threats from the Soviet musical bureaucracy.
Weinberg's
Symphony No. 12, Op. 114, is subtitled
"In memoriam Dmitri Shostakovich" and has the right to sound like the older master. However, even here, there is a feeling of expanding on
Shostakovich, not simply aping him. The work somewhat resembles the grim but wry
Symphony No. 15 in A minor, Op. 141, of
Shostakovich. The
Symphony No. 12 is the longest of
Weinberg's 22 symphonies, clocking in at 55 minutes plus, and though it makes use of material that resembles music by
Shostakovich, it uses that material in new ways. Sample the finale, a masterpiece of
Shostakovich-like ambivalence, and check out the spectral marimba material. Even more distinctive is the substantial symphonic poem
Dawn, Op. 60, composed in 1957 for the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. At this point,
Shostakovich hadn't written a tone poem of this kind, and there are later
Shostakovich works in which he seems to follow his mentee in writing music acceptable to the censors but not producing bombastic socialist-realist celebrations.
Storgards is not a highly subjective conductor of Russian music, but he does well in the complex textures and difficult long arcs of this music, and
Chandos' MediaCity sound is ideal and idiomatic. Every new
Weinberg recording rewrites the canon a bit, and listeners can experience the process here. This release made classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023. ~ James Manheim
