Weinberg: Dawn; Symphony No. 12

Albumbeschreibung

The music of Mieczysław Weinberg is an increasingly common presence in recording catalogs, and this new release from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor John Storgårds 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. Storgårds 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.

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