Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Symphony No. 6 / Sinfonietta No. 1 – Vineyard Edition Vol. 1

[02] The little violin
Lev Kvitko

I broke a box
A small chest made of plywood:
The box is seen from the side
Quite like a little fiddle.

I have on a twig
Four hairs attached
Nobody has ever
Saw such a bow.

I stuck and I voted
worked day and night
A little violin came out
Like there is no second!

plays in my hands
And sing it obediently...
Even the chicken has become thoughtful
And peck no more grains.

And the sparrows are chirping
screaming in confusion:
"What a treat
Doesn’t that music mean it?”

So play, play, my little fiddle!
Tra-la, tra-la, tra-li!
Music sounds through the garden
And gets lost in the distance.

The cat threw back its head
The horse gallops.
Where does he comes from? where does ... come from
That violinist you've never seen before?

Tra-la! The little violin has fallen silent...
fourteen chicks,
horses and sparrows
thank me

I have the little violin
Not broken and not soiled,
I wear it carefully
And will hide it in the forest.

on a tall tree,
In the middle of the branches
The music quietly slumbers
In my fiddle.

[04]A ditch has been dug in red clay
Samuel Galkin

***

A ditch is dug in red clay,
I once had a hearth and a shelter...
Here the gardens rustled in spring
And in winter blizzards blew
The clean snow glittered like salt:
Now there is only blood and pain here.

As from a thunderbolt
The roof of the house trembled.
The door to my house was wide open.
Woe to my house!
It is now open to violence.
They mixed my blood with dust.
Children weep in the dark of night
is the fascist executioner feast!

A ditch has been dug in red clay
and filled to the brim.

Countless are the children killed.
Her death was difficult.
The ditch is not red from the clay.
This ditch is their home and shelter.
There they are to this day
in the dark pit, in the red clay.

Year after year goes by.
Tree branches will form a roof here.
The pain will subside, the lament will be silent,
Joy will shine like a rainbow.
Children will grow again.
Should they romp around here
So that the living die in the holy grave
Don't forget the slumbering ones.

A ditch has been dug in red clay.
I once had a hearth and a shelter...

[05] Sleep, people
Mikhail Lukonin

sleeping, people,
Rest yourselves.
You are tired.
Take a break from the love and the drudgery.
The Milky Way is full of swarms of stars.
your windows
wither like flowers.
Your hands have worked enough and are tired
the eyes have looked enough
and sparks fly
and hearts weary with joy and torment,
tremble softly,
stepping on the brake.
sleeping, people,
as long as the night is here
Do not be afraid, -
the day will awaken and live again.
Sleep, people.
The night is so wonderful.
Rest yourselves,
put off your heels that look like apples.
All the fields near Moscow are already asleep.
The capital sleeps
she sleeps with her cheek on her hand.
she gets upset
through the beauty
and goodness
of our lives and keeps his peace.
Once again the stars have flooded the Volga with light,
it's time for the Mississippi and the Mekong to fall asleep.
The children in resting Russia are sleeping.
silence, silence –
don't wake her up until morning.
Sleep, people, wrapped in early morning sleep,
Rest yourselves
for work
and the game
binds the long-range missiles to a thread,
as if they were green balloons.
So that children and grain grow,
so that you
in daylight
and does not wake up in the dark, -
sleeps, people,
Rest yourselves.
The sun will rise
and violins will sing of peace on earth.

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

Symphony No. 6 in D minor for boys' choir and orchestra op. 79 (1962–1963)

When a "thaw" broke out in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death in 1953, artists were able to develop somewhat more freely. A fruitful period also began for the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, who fled to the Soviet Union during the German attack on Poland, which culminated in the 1960s. Symphonies Nos. 6, 8 and 9 were composed at that time. They deal with the past war in large-format symphonic works with choir. Around 1900, Gustav Mahler continued Beethoven's idea of ​​bundling orchestra and choir into a mighty »world symphony«.

Weinberg follows him when he combines vocal with instrumental movements in his 6th symphony from 1962/63. The huge cast includes about six horns and lots of percussion. Weinberg, whose parents and sister died in the Warsaw ghetto, once wrote: »Many of my works are related to war. The fact that this is the case is not based on a free decision that I would have made. Rather, dealing with the subject of war was imposed on me by my fate and by the tragic fate of my family. I consider it my moral duty to write about the war and the terrible things that have happened to people in our century".

But not only the Second World War, but also the persecution of the Jews and their own arrest in the Stalin regime may have influenced the serious musical language. On November 12, 1963 the work was premiered in Moscow with the Moscow Philharmonic and the Boys' Choir of the Moscow Choir School conducted by Kyrill Kondraschin.
The meditative introduction of the 6th symphony already announces drastic experiences, the horn expressively presents a lament theme.

The selection of the three texts is also significant: the second movement is based on a poem by Lew Kwitko (1890–1952), the Jewish author was shot by the Russian secret service in 1952 during the Stalinist »cleansing waves«. The fourth movement is also based on a poem by Shmuel Halkin (1897–1960), who was imprisoned for a long time. Only the finale uses a text by the popular writer Mikhail Lukonin (*1918), who was loyal to the regime. The middle poem tells a moving story about the Nazi massacre of Jews in 1941 near Kiev – which Shostakovich also made a subject of in his Babi Yar Symphony, which he composed at the same time. With somber words, Halkin recalls the "cries of children in the night."

The scoring of the symphony with a boys' choir gives this passage its haunting effect, but the dynamics also make this part exciting. The provocatively wild Scherzo combines the Bruckner-Mahler tradition with Shostakovich's sarcastic manner. The polyphonic part-writing is remarkable, showing Weinberg's mastery. The fact that this symphony clears up towards the end may be due to a directive from »Socialist Realism«.

The listener should not leave the hall too dejected, the message of victory and peace won by the Russian armed forces should always remain present. Weinberg first combines the radiant and calm A major ending with a reminiscence of the dreary first movement. But the hope for a peaceful life breaks the path at Weinberg towards the sunrise over the Volga, the Mississippi and the Mekong that brings people together. Finally, a lonely violin sings »about peace on earth«.

This symbolic use of the violin, which is so popular in Jewish folk music, is somewhat reminiscent of John Williams' soundtrack to Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. Incidentally, Shostakovich was deeply impressed by Weinberg's 6th Symphony and had it analyzed in his classes at the Leningrad Conservatory.

Symphony No. 1 in D minor op. 41 (1948)

It seems downright cynical that Tikhon Hrennikov of the Soviet Union of Composers described Mieczysław Weinberg's first sinfonietta as a »bright optimistic work […] of the bright, free working life of the Jewish people in the land of socialism«.

After all, the work, composed in 1948, was created against the background of a new anti-Semitism and discipline of composers in Stalinism. In this case, however, the positive and understandable character of the Sinfonietta was extremely agreeable to the government. It also contained no "modernist music," for which Weinberg had previously been censured. Nevertheless, even in this work he composed in a progressive and up-to-date manner. Through the engaging spirit of Jewish folk music, he diverts attention from refined "formalism."

On the surface, the Sinfonietta No. 1 Op. 41 presents itself as a bravura orchestral piece with snappy themes and wonderful cantilenas. The inclusion of melodic peculiarities such as augmented seconds ensure the folkloric impact. Instruments such as oboe, violin and horn are emphasized as soloists, for example in the slow movement. The recapitulations of the two outer movements are cleverly shortened and the scherzo uncharacteristically leans towards a variation movement. There may be passages reminiscent of the friend Dmitri Shostakovich.

In several works, he also managed a balancing act between an entertaining superstructure and a profound substructure. Weinberg himself, however, rejected stylistic parallels with the “greatest composer of the 20th century” and referred to a more inner relationship: “Many people believe or even wrote that I was a student of Shostakovich, which was not the case. However, the Shostakovich school was of fundamental importance for my artistic work.«

Matthew Corvin