Gidon Kremer / Madara Pētersone / Gewandhausorchester / Daniele Gatti MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG Violin Concerto - Sonata for Two Violins

 

VIOLIN CONCERTO - SONATA FOR TWO VIOLINS

Mūza Rubackytė / Mettis String Quartet DRAMATIC RUSSIAN LEGACY

DRAMATIC RUSSIAN LEGACY

Olga Scheps / Kuss Quartett MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG Piano Quintet

Olga Scheps was born in Moscow in 1986, the daughter of two pianists, and discovered the instrument for herself at the age of four. She began studying the piano more intensively after her family moved to Germany in 1992. At an early age she had already developed her own unique style of keyboard playing, which combines intense emotiveness and powerful expressivity with extraordinary pianistic technique. Among those who discovered these talents was Alfred Brendel, who has encouraged the young pianist. A holder of scholarships from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, she completed her studies with Professor Pavel Gililov in her adopted home of Cologne in 2013, passing her Concert Examination with Distinction. She rounded out her training with Professor Arie Vardi and Professor Dmitri Bashkirov.
Besides the well-known works for piano Olga Scheps’s repertory consists of compositions that are seldom heard in the concert hall, including the posthumous Études of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt’s Malédiction, Olivier Messiaen’s Les Oiseaux exotiques, Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Concerto, Arvo Pärt’s "Lamentate", and Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano 
Quintet.
Her solo recitals are as popular with audiences all over the world as her acclaimed appearances as soloist with orchestra and her chamber projects.

Gidon Kremer / Yulianna Avdeeva / Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG Chamber Music

Released in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Polska Music programme and POLSKA 100, the international cultural programme celebrating the centenary of Poland regaining independence. 

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland as part of the multi-annual programme NIEPODLEGŁA 2017-2022. 

Gidon Kremer and friends perform three pieces of chamber music by the Polish-born Soviet composer, including an outstanding account of the Piano Trio.

Following the success of the Weinberg Symphonies 2 & 21 with conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Deutsche Grammophon now features chamber music by Mieczysław Weinberg under the direction of Gidon Kremer.

Included among others are his “Three Pieces for Violin and Piano”, which Weinberg completed in the winter of 1934/35 when he was only 15 years old and had not yet received any compositional training.

What connects Weinberg’s works is not only their compositional perfection, but above all their constant commitment to beauty. It is a confession that in Weinberg’s music is above all pain and suffering.

Gidon Kremer MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG 24 Preludes for Violin Solo

The 24 Preludes for Cello solo by Mieczysław Weinberg have a particular history. He composed them in the late sixties for Mstislav Rostropovich, who never played them. Their musical language is aphoristic, often brutal, provocative and marked by an inner conflict. The Preludes reveal many different and very strong gestures. Their performance may have been problematic in Soviet times.

Gidon Kremer has adapted the preludes for solo violin and this is the world premiere recording of his adaptation. In his concert program “Preludes to a Lost Time”, he plays them to projections of pictures by the famous Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus. One of these pictures is shown on the cover of the CD. Gidon Kremer’s earlier approaches to the music of the long neglected, brilliant composer Weinberg, in whom many see a legitimate musical heir to Dmitri Shostakovich from today’s perspective, were praised by music critics all over the world. Kremer, with his very own tone, seems to be the ideal interpreter for this exciting repertoire.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla / Gidon Kremer / City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kremerata Baltica WEINBERG Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21

The Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla launches her new exclusive relationship with Deutsche Grammophon on 3 May 2019 with the release of an album devoted to Mieczysław Weinberg’s music. It showcases one of Weinberg’s earliest compositions, the Second Symphony for strings of 1946, and the Symphony No.21 “Kaddish”, completed in 1991, his haunting memorial to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Kremerata Baltica perform Symphony No.2 and join the CBSO for No.21. The violin solos in the latter work are played by Gidon Kremer. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s music director since 2016, is convinced that listeners will be deeply affected by the composer’s works, which bear witness not only to the variety of his output but its consistently high artistic quality.

“In my opinion Weinberg’s definitely one of the most important composers of the twentieth century,” she observes. “We have an enormous amount of works by him. There are twenty-two symphonies, seventeen string quartets, seven operas, music for film and television, circus and theatre. Each of those works has an incredible ability to speak to performers, to listeners. One can only really judge after encountering those works or at least the majority of them, just how important he is as a composer.”

Echoing his own life experiences, much of Weinberg’s production reveals the influence of some of the most tragic moments in 20th-century history. Born to a Jewish family in Warsaw on 8 December 1919, Weinberg showed early musical talent as a pianist. He was forced to abandon his studies in 1939 when his country was invaded at first by the Nazis, then by Stalin’s Red Army. His mother, father and sister were murdered by the Nazis, while most of his extended family also perished in the Holocaust. He found temporary refuge in Belarus, then headed east to Tashkent when Hitler turned against the Soviet Union in 1941. Shostakovich, impressed by his younger contemporary’s First Symphony, invited him to Moscow in 1943. Weinberg lived there until his death 53 years later.

The Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer has played a central role in promoting the composer’s music. He launched the centenary celebrations this January on tour with his Kremerata Baltica ensemble, a chamber orchestra comprising outstanding young musicians from the Baltic states. When Kremer was appointed as the CBSO’s artist-in-residence for 2018-19, he and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla placed Weinberg at the heart of their programme plans. In an innovative but ultimately hugely successful move, they also decided to bring Kremerata Baltica to Birmingham last November to join forces with the CBSO for the UK premiere of Weinberg’s Symphony No.21 and for DG’s recording sessions

Anastasia Kobekina / Berner Symphonieorchester / Kevin John Edusei SHOSTAKOVICH - WEINBERG - KOBEKIN

The Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina is a multiple prize winner at international competitions. In 2018, she was awarded the Prix Thierry Scherz and the Prix André Hoffmann at the Swiss winter music festi­val “Sommets musicaux de Gstaad”, which includes a recording with orchestra for the Swiss recording label Claves. In the same year, Anastasia was selected by BBC 3 to join the BBC New Generation scheme from 2018 to 2020.

In 2016, she won the soloist prize of the renowned German festival „Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern“ and the 2nd prize at the George Enescu Competition in Bukarest. In 2015, Anastasia Kobekina won the 1st prize at Germany’s most important International Youth Competition “Tonali15 Music Competition” (Hamburg). As a result of this competition success, Anastasia earned €10.000 prize money and a violoncello made by G. B. Guadagnini loaned for three years. Additionally, in her home country, Anastasia also was the first-prize winner of several international competitions, such as the television contest “Nutcracker” in 2007 and the competition “New names” (2008).

Trio Goldberg DE L'OMBRE À LA LUMIÈRE

The Goldberg Trio was founded when three key-members of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra (Liza Kerob, Concertmaster - Federico Hood, Principal viola - Thierry Amadi, Principal cello), rich with the diversity of their respective cultural backgrounds, joined forces to create this dynamic and electric ensemble. The well-rehearsed string trios by Klein, Weinberg, Dohnányi and Cras are some of the most important and interesting contributions to the genre in the 20th century.

Kathrin Christians / Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn / Ruben Gazarian FELD - WEINBERG - THEODORAKIS

“Feld’s Concerto for flute, string orchestra, piano, harp and percussion is the work that set the idea to record this rather unusual repertoire in motion. This piece is one of the cases in music history where a decent work is at risk of wrongly being forgotten. It is played far too rarely. The outward-thrusting eruptive energy, which might not be typically associated with the flute, is what intrigued me. Weinberg’s brilliant version of Concerto no. 2 op. 148 for flute and string orchestra is recorded here for the first time ever and was another important item for me, even though I initially harboured some doubts when putting the programme together. I spent a long time pondering on whether or not to include the Weinberg and Mikis Theodorakis’s Adagio for Solo-Flute, String Orchestra & Percussion, fearing that it would make for a very sombre release. This dilemma was an important process because it made me realise just how good the selection is. All the pieces go hand in hand with one another, feed into one another and give one another so much energy.”

Kathrin Christians is an internationally renowned flautist, having performed worldwide both as a soloist and with orchestras. On this release she performs with the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn (WKO), under the baton of its chief conductor and artistic director Ruben Gazarian. (Presto Classical)

Gidon Kremer / Kremerata Baltica MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG Chamber Symphonies - Piano Quintet

In 2014 ECM New Series featured Kremerata Baltica in a widely-praised album dedicated to the music of Mieczysław Weinberg. Now Gidon Kremer’s orchestra continues the story, turning its attention to the four chamber symphonies completed in the last decade of the Polish-born Soviet composer’s life. The arc of the album – recorded in Vienna and in Riga in June 2015 – also embraces a striking new arrangement, by Gidon Kremer and Kremerata percussionist Andrey Pushkarev, of Weinberg’s early Piano Quintet.

In his recollection of Mieczysław Weinberg in the liner notes, fellow composer Alexander Raskatov speaks of the “incredible renaissance” of Weinberg’s music, a revival which might well have amazed its author. Since his death in 1996, Weinberg’s work has been widely re-evaluated, with Gidon Kremer and Kremeratica Baltica have been among the artists calling for broader recognition for a composer who “strongly opposed any division of music into avant-garde and ‘arrière-garde’, as Raskatov remembers.

The Kremer/Pushkarev arrangement of the Piano Quintet op. 18 extends the creative spirit of Weinberg’s reworkings of his own material: each of his chamber symphonies developed earlier music and took it to new places. The kernel of the Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1986) can be found in Weinberg’s Second String Quartet, written 45 years earlier. “He continued the process,” writes David Fanning in the liner notes, “by reworking his Third String Quartet as Chamber Symphony No. 2 and his Fifth String Quartet as Chamber Symphony No. 3. These were all rehabilitations of previously unpublished works. Finally he added the profoundly introspective Chamber Symphony No. 4, his last completed opus, based not on a string quartet but on several of his late works,”

Weinberg’s chamber symphonies are, Gidon 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.”

The violinist considers the present Weinberg recording “the most valuable landmark” in Kremerata Baltica’s discography, and the album is released in time for a major tour celebrating both the orchestra’s 20th anniversary as well as its leader’s 70th birthday. Weinberg’s compositions form an integral part of the orchestra’s concert repertoire in the current season. (ECM Records)

Mimi Stillman / Charles Abramovic FREEDOM Weinberg - Finko - Danielpour

It is with great pleasure that I introduce “Freedom,” which brings together two works commissioned by my Dolce Suono Ensemble and one discovery, all receiving their first recordings here. This has been a journey of over six years of artistic exploration and planning during which pianist Charles Abramovic and I performed and lived with these works extensively. It began when we commissioned Richard Danielpour to write a trio for Dolce Suono Ensemble - pianist Charles Abramovic, cellist Yumi Kendall, and me. I had known and worked with Richard since my student days at the Curtis Institute of Music and had long been thinking of collaborating on a new piece. As it happened, the people of Iran erupted in protest for their freedom while he was composing the work in 2009, sparking Richard to reflect on his Persian-Jewish roots and the plight of the Iranian people living under a brutally repressive regime. The result was Remembering Neda: Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano , a work of great depth, a powerfully emotional contribution not only to our repertoire for flute, cello, and piano trio, but to the chamber music repertoire at large. 

The next piece to enter my life was Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Five Pieces for Flute and Piano . In 2011, I met with Bret Werb, the musicologist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, to get his advice on a project I was planning on the music of the Holocaust. Toward the end of our conversation, Werb showed me a facsimile of a flute and piano work by Mieczyslaw Weinberg he had come across in St. Petersburg, saying he could not find references to any public performances since shortly after it was written in 1947, and published by the Soviet Composers’ Union the following year. Playing through it, I was immediately captivated by its beauty and depth. This fortuitous meeting resulted in a nearly four year journey of exploration of Mieczylsaw Weinberg’s Five Pieces for Flute and Piano and his life and music. I had the privilege of giving the United States premiere of the work with Charlie on the Dolce Suono Ensemble series in Philadelphia in 2013, with subsequent performances at the National Flute Association in Chicago and on concert tours. 

Mieczyslaw Weinberg suffered personal tragedy at the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviets. A Polish Jew, he narrowly escaped the Nazi invasion by fleeing to the Soviet Union, but his whole family was murdered in the Holocaust. For Weinberg and his fellow artists working under the Soviet regime, artistic expression was fraught with the threat of censorship, imprisonment, and murder. He formed a close friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich, and both composers were persecuted in the anti-Formalist purge of Stalin in 1948, along with Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and other composers. It is not known whether political events played a role in Weinberg’s Five Pieces , effectively lost until recently, but the piece does come from a particularly turbulent period in Weinberg’s life. He was imprisoned for several months in 1953, but was saved in part because of Stalin’s death. 

Five Pieces for Flute and Piano is a suite of contrasting character pieces. "Landscape", a lyrical movement, connotes a sense of spaciousness through ample rubato and silences. Three movements are contrasting dances – “First Dance,” a march-like Allegretto which is sometimes elegant, at times ponderous; “Second Dance,” which veers from a classical-sounding minuet to an off-kilter waltz; and “Third Dance,” a virtuosic Presto in which flute and piano engage in playful dialogue culminating in a rousing finale. The fourth piece, “Melody,” is the emotional core of the set, a soulful, at times anguished song. 

I decided to commission David Finko to write his Sonata for Flute and Piano in 2012 after I performed and recorded his piccolo concerto with Orchestra 2001 and conductor James Freeman. I was impressed with Finko’s compositional craft, part of a lineage stretching back through Shostakovich to Prokofiev to Rimsky- Korsakov. And I was moved by the searing personal stamp in his music when he reflects on his history of narrowly escaping the Nazis and suffering persecution under the Soviets as an artist and as a Jew. Something resonated with me as a Jewish artist of Eastern European descent, and I knew that if David wrote for me the result would be a profoundly eloquent work. 

Working on this collection of pieces has been one of the most inspiring projects in my musical life, as it deals with the universal human yearning to be free. Danielpour writes on this theme, and the life stories of Weinberg and Finko are a testament to their courageous dedication to their art. 

I dedicate this recording to the artists who at different times and places have dared to express themselves whatever the risks, in recognition of the triumph of artistic freedom and of the human spirit. (Mimi Stillman)

Gidon Kremer / Kremerata Baltica MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG

This new album from Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica and soloists, recorded at Neuhardenberg and Lockenhaus in 2012 and 2013, makes a strong case for Shostakovich’s assertion that Weinberg was one of the great composers of his era. He was certainly amongst the most prolific, with a work list that includes seven operas, twenty-two symphonies, ten concertos, seventeen string quartets and a vast output of chamber and vocal works.
Born in Warsaw in 1919, Mieczysław Weinberg studied at the Polish capital’s conservatory. His plans for further study in the United States were thwarted by the outbreak of World War II: when the Nazis invaded Poland, Weinberg fled first to Minsk and then to Tashkent. He moved to Moscow in 1943 where, his troubles far from over, he was targeted both for his modernist musical leanings and his Jewish background. (With some of his works blacklisted, Weinberg’s only income for years came from incidental music written for local theatre productions.) In 1953 he was arrested on charges of ‘Jewish bourgeois nationalism’, and jailed. Shostakovich wrote letters on his behalf, and after Stalin’s death Weinberg was released and officially rehabilitated.
Near neighbours in Moscow, Weinberg and Shostakovich spent much time together. As Wolfgang Sandner writes in the liner notes, “the two close friends, though thirteen years apart, constantly showed each other their new scores, often played piano duets together and exchanged ideas on art and composition.” Like many composers in the Soviet Union, Weinberg was obliged to spend much of his creative life negotiating the margins of freedom between official doctrine and artistic necessity. As the demands from above for Socialist Realism began to slacken in the 1960s and 70s, his art moved into its most productive phase.
The present double album opens with one of his most remarkable creations from this latter period, the extensive (22-minutes) and complex third violin sonata of 1978. Kremer ranks this work alongside Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin as one of the masterpieces for the instrument.
“This is music that speaks to us,” writes Wolfgang Sandner, “full of dynamism, colour and detailed articulation that never ossifies into virtuosity for its own sake. The wealth of invention in the sonata and the advanced sounds of the Tenth Symphony bear witness to a composer at the same high level as a Shostakovich or Prokofiev.”
Kremer and friends explore Weinberg’s chamber music – the Trio op 48 (composed 1950) and the Sonatina op.46 (1949) – and the commitment and skills of the Kremerata musicians are brought to bear on two strikingly-contrasting compositions for string orchestra, the graceful and lyrical Concertino op. 42 (1948) and the adventurous and gripping Symphony no 10 (1968), bringing12-tone rows and chordal structure into unexpected juxtapositions.
Mieczysław Weinberg died in Moscow in 1996. In recent years his works have begun to get a wider hearing. In particular his opera about the Holocaust, “The Passenger”, never staged in Weinberg’s lifetime, has made headlines. After a concertante version was produced in Moscow in 2006, the full staged version was premiered at the Bregenz Festival in 2010 and subsequently presented in London and Warsaw. The US premiere was in Houston in January 2014. New York performances at the Drill Hall follow in July.
Meanwhile Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica continue to make the music of Mieczysław Weinberg a focus of their international touring repertoire.

Latvian-born master violinist Gidon Kremer founded Kremerata Baltica in 1997 to foster outstanding young musicians from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, the three Baltic States.