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Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21

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4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 178 ratings
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Editorial Reviews

The first female conductor signed to DG in its 120-year history, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla launches her exclusive relationship with the Yellow Label with an album devoted to Mieczyslaw Weinberg, whom she deems a "scandalously underrated composer." The album features the early Symphony No.2 and one of Weinberg's final works, the Symphony No.21 "Kaddish," with Kremerata Baltica performing both symphonies and joined in No.21 by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Gidon Kremer.

Product details

  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.67 x 4.96 x 0.24 inches; 4.3 ounces
  • Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Deutsche Grammophon
  • Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2019
  • Date First Available ‏ : ‎ March 29, 2019
  • Label ‏ : ‎ Deutsche Grammophon
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07P97V6SH
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 178 ratings

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  • francisco Carrasco
    5.0 out of 5 stars Muy recomendable.
    Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Maravillosa interpretación de la joven directora Lituna, Grazinyte-Tyla, que asumió la OP de la ciudad de Birminham, ocupando un gran virtuosismo se pone a la altura de sus antecesores (Rattle, Nelsons, etc).
    Muy recomendable.
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  • D Lawrence
    5.0 out of 5 stars The best so far of the Weinberg Revivals
    Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Two very different symphonies by Weinberg, a great composer recently rescued from obscurity. This lady really knows her business, and also serves as a classy Vocalaise Singer when one is called for.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Matt
    5.0 out of 5 stars A conductor to follow
    Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    This is great music brought alive by an extremely vibrant and colorful conductor. The 21st Symphony is to illustrate the Jewish experience in the Warsaw Ghetto of WW2. Good stuff well done. Mirga is one to watch.
    8 people found this helpful
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  • John E. Roos
    5.0 out of 5 stars A great discovery
    Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2019
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    Great music. Outstanding recording.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Harry Freiberg
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars in all aspects...
    Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Wondrous.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Fanfare Archive
    5.0 out of 5 stars Laconic, personal, profound, and not to be missed
    Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2019
    Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare magazine

    This pair of CDs is the recording debut of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a Lithuanian conductor born in 1986 who was named as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director in 2016. She is the first female conductor ever to sign an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. All of this is quite an achievement for a conductor so young, and I’m sure it did not hurt that she is attractive. Nevertheless, there is no denying that this is an exciting debut, as it features deserving music understandingly performed. I’ve got nothing against Tchaikovsky symphonies, but I am so glad that this is not another Tchaikovsky symphony CD!
    These two symphonies frame Weinberg’s career. Symphony No. 2, completed in 1946, dates from two years after he, a displaced Polish Jew, arrived in Moscow by way of Minsk and Tashkent, after having been befriended by Shostakovich. Especially in his music from this period, but to a degree in most of his works from there on in, Shostakovich’s influence can be heard. Of course, Mahler’s influence can be heard in Shostakovich’s music, and Gidon Kremer has commented, about the Symphony No. 21, “It was actually as if one had discovered Mahler’s Eleventh Symphony.” I don’t know if I would go that far, as I see Mahler’s music as more about the human condition than Weinberg’s (or Shostakovich’s, for that matter), which seems more personal to me—although that isn’t to say that this makes it inferior.
    The Symphony No. 2 is in three movements and is 34 minutes in length. The writing is conservative, but what makes the symphony interesting is the difficulty of reading its emotions. Everywhere one turns, there is a touching ambiguity, or perhaps a guarded quality. The opening Allegro moderato might be described as pastoral, and yet there is unhappiness lying right beneath its surface. Next comes an Adagio whose opening melody, unharmonized for nearly the first two minutes, sounds like Shostakovich and Mahler colored by Khachaturian. An Allegretto closes the symphony, and again, a hushed, reticent quality contradicts the music’s attempts to be bright and cheerful. The ending is spectral. The previous recording, with the Umeå Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Svedlund, is pretty good, but the Kremerata Baltica has more tonal polish, and so I prefer this new reading.
    The Symphony No. 21 (1991), in one movement and nearly 55 minutes in length, is a much more complex work. It was the composer’s last completed symphony. In its contrasts, it reminds me somewhat of the Symphony No. 6, which was the first Weinberg symphony I heard many years ago, but this “Kaddish” Symphony is darker, deeper, and more intense. It is filled with quotations, both veiled and obvious, and of the composer’s own music as well as works by other composers. The first section is a Largo in which Kremer’s violin wanders lost and alone in a desolate landscape. Its song is based on Mahler’s Das irdische Leben, although this is far from obvious. Weinberg also quotes his String Quartet No. 4, and a piano, seemingly coming out of nowhere, plays a bit of Chopin’s Ballade No. 1. There is klezmer music from hell in a demented Presto section in the work’s middle. And so it goes. Although the score is written for a large orchestra, much of the time its textures are closer to that of chamber music—another Shostakovich parallel. Because it is not a particularly symphonic symphony, it can seem disjointed or directionless. However, the more one listens, the more it sinks in and knits itself together. It’s worth the effort. Again, there is an earlier recording, this time with the Siberian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dmitriy Vasilyev (Toccata Classics). It’s a powerful reading, but a little raw, and I think this new recording is the way to go. By the way, the conductor herself sings the soprano vocalise in the symphony’s last section—very nicely, by the way.
    I am not sure that these are the best introductory works for listeners unacquainted with Weinberg’s music. However, if you’re developing a taste for this composer, or have developed one already, you need to hear these two symphonies, and at the present, these are the best recordings.
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  • Joel Flegler
    5.0 out of 5 stars Two great performances raise Weinberg’s symphonies to a new level
    Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2019
    Huntley Dent, Fanfare magazine

    A rising Lithuanian conductor, a world-famous Latvian violinist, and a Polish-Russian composer—the ghosts of the Soviet empire are never quite banished. This prestige release on the yellow label marks a significant step for Mieczysław Weinberg, whose music has largely been relegated to Melodiya, Naxos, and a handful of specialty labels. It has worked both for and against him that he was so closely allied with Shostakovich, who took extraordinary steps to protect Weinberg from anti-Semitic persecution. It’s a cliché to say that Shostakovich’s influence can be heard in Weinberg’s music, although there are times, as in their Piano Quintets, when both worked in the same genre to produce masterful works.

    But genius has prerogatives denied to talent, even a major talent. This is exemplified by the pairing of Weinberg’s Symphony No. 2 from 1946 and the nearly hour-long Symphony No. 21 from 1991, almost the last work he composed. Neither work has the consistency of Shostakovich’s major symphonies, or the spark of genius that keeps a listener continually engrossed. These are bleak, largely slow works that speak of sorrow, pain, and endurance in facing the horrors of history—Weinberg narrowly escaped from Poland in 1939 and lost his family in the Nazi concentration camps.

    Troubling music for troubled times holds a special place, more honored than performed (significantly, Symphony No. 21 waited over 20 years before the first recording, from Siberia, appeared in 2014). This release sets itself apart—and becomes a more bearable listening experience—thanks to the splendid, one might say unprecedented, performances under Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla. It’s about time a woman conductor signed on to a major label, and it took courage for Gražinyte-Tyla to choose this obscure, dark repertoire as her debut. But she has been part of Gidon Kremer’s dedication to revive Weinberg’s music and bring it to wider attention; she conducted on one of the best Weinberg collections to date, on ECM from 2017 (enthusiastically received by me in Fanfare 40:6).

    Symphony No. 2 is for string orchestra, and the majority of such works are serenades. Weinberg adheres to that tradition in the opening of the first movement, a lilting Allegro moderato that would be cheerful except for minor-key passages that lend a melancholy and ambiguous air. The music becomes steadily darker and more complex emotionally, revealing Weinberg’s serious intent. He is anticipating the chamber symphonies for strings adapted from Shostakovich’s string quartets. Somberness and tangled emotions dominate the central Adagio, which has almost (but not quite) the riveting quality of a Shostakovich slow movement like the searing Largos in the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Weinberg incorporates string-quartet gestures such as the unison statement of the opening theme and winnowing the sound down to single voices at times.

    This highly varied use of string sound is one of the Second Symphony’s strengths and impressively displays Weinberg’s skill with instrumental color. So much of the Adagio is stark and bare that we can’t help, from the perspective of 1946, hearing the exhaustion and profound loss incurred by Russia in the terrible war just ended. The density of string harmonies is anguished enough at times to rival Strauss’s Metamorphosen, which has the same desolate purpose, although Weinberg ventures into more grating dissonance. The finale, marked Allegretto, indicates a degree of lightness that is present in the texture but not in the grief-tinged themes and hollow feeling of the music (Shostakovich has just such Allegrettos in the Eighth and 10th Symphonies). Tapering off to silence makes for an evocative ending of sorrow recollected in tranquility.

    Weinberg’s last Symphony, No. 21, leaps ahead 45 years and many opus numbers, from op. 30 to op. 152. The subtitle of “Kaddish,” for the Jewish service for the dead, and the dedication to the victims of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II indicate the score’s grief-stricken tone. The symphony is in one movement of six sections, beginning with Largo and ending with Lento (a format Shostakovich employs in Quartet No. 15). Here the City of Birmingham Symphony, which Gražinyte-Tyla heads, is combined with Kremerata Baltica, and the score’s lonely, eloquent violin solos are undertaken by Kremer himself.

    Within its 54-minute span Weinberg summarizes not so much a life in music as a life in history: Poland is evoked through Jewish harmonies, in the Ernest Bloch vein, which appear prominently in the violin solos and other solos from a klezmer-like clarinet, along with nursery tunes, folk-dance rhythms, funeral bells, and a piano brokenly recalling fragments of Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor. There are wrenching outcries of the Holocaust victims and prayers for their souls. The scale and variety of the score fulfill Mahler’s dictum about a symphony being a world, but even more I was reminded of the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and his lifelong recreation of the lost world of Polish Jews.

    These elements in dizzying profusion have the effect of being both surreal narrative and autobiography, which helps sustain the symphony’s memoir-like diversity and sprawl, which includes quotations from Weinberg’s earlier works. I don’t hear an organizing principle or through-line so much as episodes from a horrifying era. The result is often captivating, if wrenching, and the performance sets a new standard for Weinberg’s symphonies, since Gražinyte-Tyla approaches Symphony No. 21 as if it was a masterpiece. (She is also the child-like wordless soprano keening in the fifth section.) DG’s recorded sound is excellent, and the two-CD set, which runs only a few minutes over the timing of a single disc, sells for a price that makes the second CD free.

    Weinberg was a prolific and uneven composer, who can transit from uninspired ideas to deeply moving passages in a single movement. He has no signature set of harmonies, no specific voice, and a range of outlooks. That he can be elegiac, sorrowful, sardonic, a borrower of folk tunes, and a dutiful film composer for the huge Soviet cinema apparatus (he churned out more than 40 scores for movies and animations) makes for a career akin to Shostakovich’s or Prokofiev’s. Thanks to a great performance like the two on this release, he even rises to their musical stature, at least for a while.
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  • dbmsonic
    5.0 out of 5 stars EMOZIONANTE SCOPERTA
    Reviewed in Italy on May 14, 2023
    Verified Purchase
    Spero che basti la curiosità musicale - se non “la fede” di credere ai miei (umili) consigli di appassionato – per giustificare l’acquisto di questo album prezioso della DM, firmato dalla conduttrice lituana Mirga Gražinyté-Tyla con la Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Due sinfonie del secondo novecento del compositore ebreo polacco – ma naturalizzato russo - Mieczysław Weinberg, una vita in fuga tra “la padella” del nazismo e le “braci” di Stalin, eppure fortunatamente sopravvissuto ad entrambi. Autore assai prolifico che ci arriva qui con due opere comprensibilmente assai diverse, non fosse che per la distanza temporale: la sua Seconda Sinfonia del 1946 e poi la Ventunesima e sua ultima del 1991, che per originalità compositiva è il principale punto di interesse del disco. Dedicata alle vittime del ghetto di Varsavia – il sottotitolo «Kaddish» è appunto una preghiera funebre della liturgia ebraica – vanta uno stile in equilibrio tra Mahler e Shostakovich, con un organico davvero imponente comprendendo oltre alla BSO anche la Kremerata Baltica di 23 elementi e il grande Gidon Kremer violino solista: merita particolare attenzione nell’ultimo movimento la voce soprano - della stessa Mirga – a ricordarci senza citazionismi verbali l’innocenza di chi perì nella brutalità del male. Opportunamente presentata su disco separato e certamente di minore impatto emotivo, la Sinfonia n. 2 per orchestra d’archi che completa l’album in doppio CD, non è tuttavia di trascurabile interesse: neoclassica nella forma – erano gli anni dominati in Unione Sovietica dal “realismo socialista” – eppure quasi schömbergiana nell’espressività. Il libretto offre comunque nelle sue note un’ottima guida all’ascolto (in inglese e tedesco, pazienza) oltre che una meritevole scelta iconografica per il compositore e tutti i protagonisti, con un’immagine di copertina davvero pregevole per questa splendida direttrice d’orchestra: per me davvero una scoperta emozionante. Se i nomi degli interpreti ci risultano quasi impronunciabili, non di meno il fascino di questa musica si rafforza ad ogni ascolto. Davvero il disco merita l’acquisto.
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    dbmsonic
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    EMOZIONANTE SCOPERTA

    Reviewed in Italy on May 14, 2023
    Spero che basti la curiosità musicale - se non “la fede” di credere ai miei (umili) consigli di appassionato – per giustificare l’acquisto di questo album prezioso della DM, firmato dalla conduttrice lituana Mirga Gražinyté-Tyla con la Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Due sinfonie del secondo novecento del compositore ebreo polacco – ma naturalizzato russo - Mieczysław Weinberg, una vita in fuga tra “la padella” del nazismo e le “braci” di Stalin, eppure fortunatamente sopravvissuto ad entrambi. Autore assai prolifico che ci arriva qui con due opere comprensibilmente assai diverse, non fosse che per la distanza temporale: la sua Seconda Sinfonia del 1946 e poi la Ventunesima e sua ultima del 1991, che per originalità compositiva è il principale punto di interesse del disco. Dedicata alle vittime del ghetto di Varsavia – il sottotitolo «Kaddish» è appunto una preghiera funebre della liturgia ebraica – vanta uno stile in equilibrio tra Mahler e Shostakovich, con un organico davvero imponente comprendendo oltre alla BSO anche la Kremerata Baltica di 23 elementi e il grande Gidon Kremer violino solista: merita particolare attenzione nell’ultimo movimento la voce soprano - della stessa Mirga – a ricordarci senza citazionismi verbali l’innocenza di chi perì nella brutalità del male. Opportunamente presentata su disco separato e certamente di minore impatto emotivo, la Sinfonia n. 2 per orchestra d’archi che completa l’album in doppio CD, non è tuttavia di trascurabile interesse: neoclassica nella forma – erano gli anni dominati in Unione Sovietica dal “realismo socialista” – eppure quasi schömbergiana nell’espressività. Il libretto offre comunque nelle sue note un’ottima guida all’ascolto (in inglese e tedesco, pazienza) oltre che una meritevole scelta iconografica per il compositore e tutti i protagonisti, con un’immagine di copertina davvero pregevole per questa splendida direttrice d’orchestra: per me davvero una scoperta emozionante. Se i nomi degli interpreti ci risultano quasi impronunciabili, non di meno il fascino di questa musica si rafforza ad ogni ascolto. Davvero il disco merita l’acquisto.
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  • Carlos P.
    5.0 out of 5 stars impresionante directora
    Reviewed in Spain on February 3, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Mirga Grazinyte es una de las grandes batutas de este nuevo siglo, sucesora en la Orquesta de Birminghan de Simon Rattle y Andris Nelson, a mí me parece mejor que el primero y equiparable al segundo. Además, da a conocer a un prolífico e ignorado casi compositor Weinberg. Un placer para escuchar.
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  • Dr. Tim Parker
    5.0 out of 5 stars Heart breaking and heart warming at the same time. Simply superb.
    Reviewed in Canada on June 25, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is a Lithuanian conductor who's making a name for herself with recordings like this 2-CD box of Weinberg. For those unfamiliar with Mieczysław Weinberg, he is a Jewish composer (1919–1996) who went through the horrors of WWII.

    There's two pieces on this set, the first is Weinberg's Symphony No 2, which is an interesting work with some real touches of brilliance, especially the final movement. Written in 1946 it is an interesting mix of joy and sorrow. While a relatively early work compared to some of his later symphonies, it's a work that deserves to be better known than it is.

    Yet, it's the second work, with the CBSO, Symphony 21, that is the stand-out here. Over six movements, the Symphony No. 21, "Kaddish" (written in 1991) is based on the Jewish prayer for the dead. This is a reflection of Weinberg's youth, where at the age of 20 he was forced to leave both parents and Warsaw and flee to Belarus, where he then had to leave a couple of years later for Russia, where he was persecuted for his Jewish beliefs. The Symphony 21 is his reflection on the past and the pain it imposed, and it's a truly heart-wrenching work, not so much for the music as the emotions it wrings from the listener, both in the music and the silences between the music. This is probably the most impactful use of silence in musical pieces I have ever heard, and it's dramatic for those who listen and think. Truly, I have not been so affected by a new (to me) work as I have with this recording.

    The CBSO and Gražinytė-Tyla are superb in this Symphony, and I can only imagine what a live session would be like. Neither of these symphonies will familiar to most readers or listeners, which is a shame, as Weinberg obviously has extraordinary talent. I'm now inspired to learn as much as I can about him and his music. As for this CD, DG has done a superb engineering job on these two CDs.

    This may well be the recording of the year. While maybe not everyone's cup of tea, this is a tremendous release. It's that haunting, impactful and thought-provoking. A superb work from Gražinytė-Tyla and I can't wait to hear her next release. Superb.
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  • Siegfried Kunisch
    5.0 out of 5 stars Tolle Neuentdeckung: Romantik x 20. Jahrhundert
    Reviewed in Germany on May 9, 2020
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    Was für eine großartige Neuentdeckung: Mieczyslaw Weinberg.
    Zuerst hatte ich sein Klavierquintett mit Olga Scheps und dem Kuss Quartett gehört. Und dieses entfaltete nach einigen Durchläufen eine stetig steigende Anziehungskraft. Weinberg hat einen sehr eigenen Stil, finde ich. Insbesondere vermag er auch wirklich sehr melodiös zu komponieren - wunderbar! Daneben gibt es immer wieder sehr in sich gekehrte Passagen, Spaß darf auch nicht fehlen (jedenfalls in diesem Klavierquintett und der zweiten Sinfonie). Dramatik wird auch geboten - im Vergleich zu Mahler aber etwas zurückhaltender, dafür sehr eindringlich. Als Einstieg in die musikalische Welt von Weinberg ist diese CD sehr gut geeignet.

    Die zweite Sinfonie hier dürfte als Einstieg ebenso geeignet sein. Zumal in der Qualität, wie sie hier geboten wird.
    Das Melodiöse in seiner Kompositionsweise wird hier vielleicht noch deutlicher als im Klavierquintett. Eigentlich scheint das Werk über weite Strecken der Romantik entsprungen zu sein. Nur moderner. :-)

    Wenn man die zweite Sinfonie "erfahren" hat, ist man mehr oder weniger gerüstet für Weinbergs Opus Magnum. Ich hatte befürchtet, dass ich nach der tollen zweiten Sinfonie von der "Kaddish" eher enttäscht werden könnte. Aber dies ist überhaupt nicht der Fall. Er fasst seine Erinnerungen an Krieg und Holocaust in Musik. Das Ergebnis ist durchaus erschütternd. Besonders plastisch empfand ich dies im vierten Satz, der mit einem flotten Rhytmus mit Schellen (!?) einen amüsanten, mitreißenden Eindruck macht. Dieser Eindruck ist mir bei nochmaligem Hören dann aber im Halse stecken geblieben. Das haben in dieser Form bislang weder Mahler noch Schostakovitsch geschafft. Man hört in dieser Sinfonie diverse Einflüsse heraus: Mahler auf jeden Fall, einige Passagen könnte man sich auch als Filmmusik vorstellen. Strawinski tritt nicht hervor, aber der Einfluss ist m. E. schon hörbar. Ein-zweimal hört man sogar eine Prise Blues. Dies ist aber alles dezent eingearbeitet.
    Dies ist jedenfalls ein sehr düsteres Werk, vielleicht in der Art der Emotion und der Eindringlichkeit mit Schostakovitschs 14. Sinfonie vergleichbar. Wenn auch mit deutlichen verschiedenen musikalischen Mitteln.

    Ach ja, das Booklet: Darin erfährt man einiges über Weinberg, über die Umstände der Aufnahmen und die Künstler. Bei diesen "neuen" Werken hätte ich mir aber gerne noch Informationen insbesondere über die Struktur der Werke gewünscht. Diese zu fassen, damit habe ich so meine Schwierigkeiten.
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  • Denis Urval
    5.0 out of 5 stars Etre sans destin
    Reviewed in France on May 15, 2019
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    Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, chef(fe) d’orchestre lituanienne née en 1986, directrice musicale de l’orchestre de Birmingham depuis septembre 2016, a signé un contrat avec Deutsche Grammophon et ceci est son premier disque sous étiquette jaune : les symphonies n°2 et 21 de Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996). Pour la Seconde, elle est à la tête de la Kremerata Baltica, l’orchestre de chambre fondé par Gidon Kremer (c’est de lui que lui vient sa passion pour ce musicien) et pour la 21ème, elle dirige, outre cette Kremerata, son orchestre de Birmingham, Gidon Kremer assurant les solos de violon que prévoit cette partition. Pour la partie de soprano du dernier mouvement, c’est Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla elle-même qui la chante. Il existait déjà un enregistrement de la 21ème symphonie chez Toccata classics dirigé par Dmitri Vasilyev.

    Quelques esprits chagrins pourraient accueillir ce disque avec scepticisme, ironie et malveillance. La contradiction étant la règle dans un monde déréglé, les mêmes qui se plaignent de tout nouvel enregistrement du grand répertoire (« Nous n’avions pas besoin de… ») se plaindront peut-être aussi du fait que Weinberg, longtemps négligé, soit finalement distingué. L’échec patent des politiques de mémoire, analysé récemment par Sarah Gensburger et Sandrine Lefranc dans un très bon livre, pourra conduire certains à dire (tout bas, sinon tout haut) tout le mal qu’ils pensent de l’idée de mettre à l’honneur l’œuvre d’un compositeur qui dédie sa dernière symphonie achevée aux victimes du ghetto de Varsovie, et lui donne le sous-titre de "Kaddish". Enfin, il y aura, inévitablement, la question des femmes dans leur « nouveau » rôle de chef d’orchestre (Nadia Boulanger tout de même, avait commencé il y a un moment) et peut-être déniera-t-on tout talent à Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla avant même de l’avoir écoutée, puisque, première femme exerçant le métier de Karajan à obtenir un contrat chez DG, elle serait promue "en raison de l'air du temps" et « pour des raisons extra-musicales ». Karl Böhm, bien sûr, autre « artiste DG », a toujours été promu pour des raisons exclusivement musicales.

    La symphonie n°21, en un peu plus de cinquante minutes, comprend deux mouvements nettement plus longs, le premier et le dernier, essentiellement contemplatifs, séparés par des mouvements plus brefs où figurent des épisodes violents, des échos de musique klezmer et des éléments de parodie. Une citation de la 1ère Ballade pour piano de Frédéric Chopin réapparaît, comme une image du passé retrouvée au milieu des décombres. La voix de soprano dans le Finale semble exprimer l’innocence des enfants sacrifiés. La musique, au lieu de construire une progression, d’aller vers une résolution, est souvent sur le point de s’effilocher, de se désagréger, procurant l’expérience d’une sorte d’Anselm Kiefer musical slave. Bien sûr on peut risquer un rapprochement avec les oeuvres les plus personnelles de Chostakovitch, mais aussi avec Schnittke, voire Galina Ustvolskaia. Je ne crois pas que le plus important soit de placer cette œuvre dans des hiérarchies (« l’égal de… », « supérieur encore à … »), ni de s’épuiser en superlatifs (certains moments sont sans doute plus prenants que d’autres) mais plutôt de se laisser gagner par l’atmosphère, de se rendre disponible pour écouter une des évocations les plus directes (malgré l’absence de tout élément descriptif ou narratif), les plus poignantes, les moins romancées, des pires tragédies du XXème siècle. Alors oui, non seulement Gidon Kremer se montre totalement investi dans ses interventions, mais on peut dire que Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla a eu raison de mettre sa notoriété naissante et son indéniable énergie au service de cette œuvre noire.

    Ecrite pour les seules cordes, comme le ballet Apollon musagète de Stravinky, évoluant dans une atmosphère épurée, la seconde Symphonie, dont chaque mouvement dépasse les dix minutes, évoque l’univers des quatuors de Chostakovitch (en 1946, on en est seulement au troisième de ce dernier). Quand on pense à la crudité d’une bonne partie de la musique soviétique de l’époque, Weinberg se signale par la distance qu’il conserve vis-à-vis des diktats de l’heure et par le raffinement de l’écriture.

    A l’évidence, ce disque n’est pas une parution Weinberg de plus : en présentant deux œuvres importantes, capables d’éclairer le reste de sa production, tout particulièrement la 21ème symphonie, il contribue de manière décisive à nous permettre de mieux situer et comprendre la personnalité attachante du compositeur polonais.

    Enfin, c'est secondaire mais récemment, rarement DG avait aussi bien choisi l’illustration de couverture.
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