Mieczysław Weinberg - Children's Notebooks; Piano Sonata No. 1 (Elisaveta Blumina)

Information

Composer: Mieczysław Weinberg

• (01) Children's Notebook, Book 1, Op. 16
• (09) Children's Notebook, Book 2, Op. 19
• (17) Children's Notebook, Book 3, Op. 23
• (24) Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 5

Elisaveta Blumina, piano
Date: 2010
Label: cpo

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Review

Time for a re-evaluation of the piano music of this rediscovered composer

It is 15 years since Murray McLachlan’s pioneering accounts of Weinberg’s six sonatas and cycles of shorter pieces appeared on the much-lamented Olympia label. Though the piano was Weinberg’s instrument, it would be idle to claim that the music he composed for it is on the level of his quartets or his symphonies. Nevertheless, someone was bound to take up the challenge again sooner or later, and Elisaveta Blumina’s achievement is to provoke a re‑evaluation of this corner of the Weinberg repertoire. Where previously one might have suspected the 21-year-old composer’s debut sonata of a degree of formal and textural miscalculation, Blumina’s superior clarity and agility reveal it as a bold, uncompromising statement, its Prokofiev‑isms perhaps not yet entirely digested, but still well on the way to producing an individual pianistic voice. I for one felt I was hearing the piece properly for the first time. The sonata was composed two years before Weinberg’s first encounter with Shostakovich and the Children’s Notebooks a year or two afterwards. The musical language here is more moderated and more focused but the expressive and technical range is far wider than the title would suggest. Blumina crafts each piece with care and insight.

Recording quality is bright without being glassy, and although CPO does not announce this new disc as “Vol 1”, I would be more than happy if it proved to be the beginning of a cycle (another complete survey, comprising all Weinberg’s solo piano works on four discs, is soon to appear on Naxos, so competition is hotting up).

-- David Fanning, Gramophone

More reviews:
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
https://www.allmusic.com/album/mieczyslaw-weinberg-childrens-notebooks-piano-sonata-no-1-mw0002111968
https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Works-Childrens-Notebooks-Sonata/dp/B004E37Z4I

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Mieczysław Weinberg (8 December 1919 in Warsaw – 26 February 1996 in Moscow) was a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish origin. From 1939 he lived in the Soviet Union and Russia and lost most of his family in the Holocaust. He left a large body of work that included twenty-two symphonies and seventeen string quartets. Weinberg's works frequently have a strong programmatic element. Throughout his life, he continually referred back to his formative years in Warsaw and to the war. Although he never formally studied with Shostakovich, the older composer had an obvious influence on Weinberg's music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_Weinberg

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Elisaveta Blumina began her studies in her native St Petersburg at the Rimsky Korsakov Conservatoire. She continued her studies at the University of Music and Theatre in Hamburg and later at the Conservatoire in Berne, with teachers including Andras Schiff, Evgeni Koroliov, Radu Lupu and Bruno Canino. Blumina is recognised as one of the most important interpreters of modern Russian repertoire. Her Mieczysław Weinberg recordings have won wide acclaim. Her career has taken her to venues such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Laeisz-Halle in Hamburg and Carnegie Hall in New York.
https://www.naxos.com/person/Elisaveta_Blumina/79501.htm
http://www.blumina.com/

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