Mieczysław Weinberg: Requiem – Weinberg Edition Vol. 3

epigraph
The gun barrels are still warm
and the sand didn't absorb all the blood
but peace came. take a breath folks
after the threshold of war is crossed...
(A. Twardovsky)

1. Bread and Iron (Dmitry Kedrin; 1907-1945)

Bread ripens on the ground where there is sun and coolness,
where the rain is roaring loudly and birds are chirping in the bushes,
but deep under the earth, nearer the bosom of hell,
iron has been deposited in rusty layers.

Let's bless the bread! It is our life and our food
but one shouldn't curse that steel that made us on the spot
promoted to underground dwellings?…
God sowed the wheat. The devil forged the iron.
...
(April 7, 1942)

2. And then (Federico Garcia Lorca; 1898-1936)

Those dug by time
Labyrinth
have disappeared.

desert
has remained.
The eternally rushing heart –
source of all desires
has dried up.
desert
has remained.

Falling haze (of the sunset)
and kisses
have passed.
desert
has remained.

falls silent,
gone cold, dried up,
disappeared …
(Desert
has remained.)

3. Gentle rain will come (Sara Teasdale; 1884-1933)

Gentle rain will come and the smell of earth
the chirping of the swift swallows all night long.

And the nocturnal coloratura of the frogs in the ponds,
and the flowering of the plum trees in white foamy gardens;

A fire breast pompom will fly down on the fence
and the robin's trill will weave a pattern of sound.

And nobody, and nobody will remember the war;
survived - forgotten, you don't have to stir up the past.

And no bird or willow will shed a tear,
when the human race disappears from the earth.

And spring, and spring greets a new dawn,
without noticing that we no longer exist, no longer exist.

(3x rep.)

4. Hiroshima Five Lines (Munetoshi Fukagawa; 1921-2008)

Like a drop of blood
the moon runs from the firmament,
illuminating the dark earth
with its flickering light...
The ashes of death fall, death, death -

My shadow fell from me
on the shadow of a person
who is burned
in the fire storm…
Yellow dust rises in plumes, dust, dust.

Children came in droves
to catch small fish
but in the estuary
swirled that day
in the whirlpool corpses, corpses.
freezing sparrows,
crowded together
chirp in the twilight
on the burned skeleton of a house
under the freezing rain, rain, under the rain.

on the river, on the river
that flows past
where it is in the heart of the explosion
there were no survivors
chamomile blossoms float silently.

In this stone
hides anger:
How deeply imprinted
the shadow of man who is burned,
burned alive!

the grass is drying up
but the color is grass green,
but the wall, the wall
is from the atomic flash
gone so white! Aaa

Even, even a simple one
Conversation …. over grass,
that the ash has covered
brings tears to your eyes,
O Japanese women!

When over that in the sunset
flaming river
the evening bell rings
I remember the inscription:
«No More Hiroshima!»

me and you, me and you
Me and you, we peel
the ripe pear,
into a happy night
the sky lets tears fall, tears, …!

Outstretched to the sky
and hands spread wide, hands,
with the supplication for the salvation of life...
you stand in front of the statue
and you're unable to walk away, unable to...

«No More Hiroshima!» Aaa

5. People went for a walk (Federico Garcia Lorca; 1898-1936)

people passed by
an autumn path.

people went out
into the green, into the green.
they wore roosters,
guitars – for hilarity,
walked through a kingdom
where seeds ruled.
The river quickly carried away the song
a fountain sang by the wayside.
(Ah, my heart,
wince!

people went out
into the green, into the green.
And behind them came autumn
in yellow stars.
with sad birds
with wave circles,
sat down on the starched shirtfront,
with hanging head.
my heart, my heart
shut up, calm down!

people passed by
and behind them came autumn.

6. Sow grain (Mikhail Dudin; 1916-1993)

I do this on earth
evil done good again,
by sowing the field with seeds.
--Rudyard Kipling

You, born on earth, by legacy
your distant ancestors are destined for you,
always, in winter as in summer
to hear with your soul: Sow corn!

I do this on earth
evil done good again,
by sowing the fields with seeds.

You, born on earth, are not thereby
your duty long preordained: ...
to preserve their forests and soils,
their seas and rivers. Sow grain!

I'll make amends...

What does it matter that the world is divided
from the melancholy of quarrels, no matter
war, plague and hunger pass away,
love and song. Sow grain!

I'll make amends...

Even if the heart in a single moment
is burned by last passion,...
and you like a grain in the depths
of the womb of the earth. Sow grain!

The earth is yours! She has the spindle
of your destiny swung.
(You, born on earth.)
And it has no end and no beginning
the eternal song Sow grain! ...

I'll make amends...
Sow grain!

At the Weinberg retrospective of the 2010 Bregenz Festival, the focus was on the staged world premiere of his opera Die Passenger, but the performance of more than twenty other works provided an insight into the incredible richness of the oeuvre of this forgotten composer. Weinberg felt compelled to compose to justify surviving the Holocaust as the only one in his family. The resulting magnificent symphonic and chamber music works are full of melancholy and defiance. Thank you to NEOS for allowing others to be a part of the rediscovery of this inspired and important composer.

David Pountney

Requiem
for soprano, boys' choir, choir and orchestra, Op. 96 (1965–1967)

The message of his sixth symphony that unites peoples can also be found in Weinberg's Requiem op War Requiem of 1962, which was recommended to him by his friend Shostakovich. Deep emotion and sheer horror at the horrors of war can be found in both works.

Of course, such funeral masses had no liturgical function in the Soviet Union, since orthodox belief was replaced by belief in the Father State. Rather, such lamentations honored military heroes or communist dignitaries. The fact that the religious devotions of earlier Requien became secular music was already in the offing with Berlioz and Verdi. In this respect, Weinberg is also in the good romantic tradition with this work.

The Requiem is large and very demanding in the vocal parts. As in the Sixth Symphony, a boys' choir is involved. This time, however, a mixed choir and a solo soprano are added. In addition to texts by the Spaniard Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), the Russian Dmitri Kedrin (1907-1945) and the American Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), Weinberg included his cantata written in 1966 in the work Hiroshima op. 92 based on texts by the Japanese Munetoshi Fukagawa (1921-2008). The American atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 had made people aware of the new destructive power of war.

Here, too, Weinberg manages to place a general criticism of the war above any national standpoint of victors and vanquished. Nevertheless, he also overwrites this work with a peace poem by the socialist poet Aleksander Twardowski (1910-1971) and ends it with a text by the compliant Soviet poet Mikhail Dudin (1916-1994). Against the background of all military conflicts, his poem describes the blossoming of a communist picture book state.

There is strong evidence that such political passages were imposed on the composer by the regime. Weinberg himself always felt the power of the state. Such verses sound like mockery to today's ears, as we witnessed the collapse of the old Soviet Union.

Weinberg's treatment of the orchestra is extremely difficult, even including harpsichord, celesta, mandolin and piano. He gives some passages a sharpness reminiscent of Stravinsky. He also skilfully manages the floating between atonal (chord cluster in the third movement) and tonal parts. He also cleverly balances the long meditative and rushing sections. Lyrical centers are the Lorca poems performed by the soprano, which frame the theatrical climax in the Hiroshima section.

But neither the gripping music nor the final political message fueled interest in Weinberg's opulent Requiem. It disappeared into the drawer of his composing room. It was not unearthed until the late premiere under Thomas Sanderling in the Philharmonic Hall Liverpool on November 21, 2009 - 13 years after Weinberg's death.

The critic Joe Riley wrote at the time in Liverpool Echo, this Requiem is »less an invocation of the Last Judgment as in Verdi's bombastic counterpart or Mozart's dark swan song, but rather an elegy on the damage done to nature«.

Matthew Corvin