Mieczysław Weinberg - Works for Cello & Orchestra (Raphael Wallfisch)

Information

Composer: Mieczysław Weinberg

• (01) Cello Concerto, Op. 43
• (05) Fantasy, Op. 52
• (06) Concertino, Op. 43bis

Raphael Wallfisch, cello

Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra

Łukasz Borowicz, conductor

Date: 2020

Label: cpo

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/mieczyslaw-weinberg-cellokonzert-op-43/hnum/8977557

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Review

Raphael Wallfisch has made it his ‘life mission as a cellist to champion the music of Jewish composers who were silenced by the infamous Third Reich and were forced to flee their homelands to survive’. Wallfisch himself is from a family of Holocaust survivors, and the carefully chosen cover illustration is Felix Nussbaum’s wonderful Die Vertriebenen (‘The displaced people’), painted not long before the artist, his wife and his parents all perished in Auschwitz. Such credentials make criticism seem almost immoral. And the circumstances in which Weinberg’s cello concertante works were composed redouble those credentials, since they show that the Soviet Union was no easy refuge from the Nazi invasions he had so narrowly escaped (from his native Warsaw in 1939, then from his two-year exile in Minsk).

The Concerto is the more expansive 1957 version of the 1948 Concertino, which latter had to go into cold storage as a result of Zhdanov’s anti-formalism campaign, until its recent rediscovery and premiere. Skilful though the expansion is – and effective in the concert hall, as the Concerto’s 2019 Proms outing proved – the more modest original layout does seem truer to the relatively undemonstrative nature of the material. Both versions gain emotional resonance from the fact that Weinberg’s adopted homeland had turned against him during one of its ghastly flirtations with anti-Semitism. That he embraced the option of resolute self-rehabilitation rather than self-pity shines through the music. The confiding lyricism of the Fantasy also has a special aura, having been composed during the last throes of Stalin’s anti-Cosmopolitan campaign when Weinberg was arrested and incarcerated in the Lubyanka and Butyrka prisons for two and a half months.

All three works carry discreet echoes of klezmer idiom, alongside those of Polish dances, as if to confirm the composer’s determination to remain true to his roots at the same time as ticking the boxes of compulsory folk-popular tunefulness. Even the superficially rather routine upbeat finale of the Concerto ultimately gives way to wistful regret: which is to say to emotional truthfulness.

It is possible to imagine more passionate, extrovert interpretations (the classic Rostropovich for the Concerto, Marina Tarasova for the Concertino), but Wallfisch has a fine feeling for Weinbergian interiority, and there is no doubting his depth of feeling throughout. The convenience of having all three of Weinberg’s concertante cello works on the same disc speaks for itself.

-- David Fanning, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Mar/Weinberg_CC_5552342.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/concerto/weinberg-cello-concerto-op-43-etc/

https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/wallfisch-plays-weinberg/

https://www.thestrad.com/reviews/raphael-wallfisch-weinberg/10443.article

https://www.wtju.net/raphael-wallfisch-shows-affinity-weinberg-cello-concerto/

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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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Raphael Wallfisch (born 15 June 1953, London) is one of the leading English cellists of his generation. Wallfisch studied with Amaryllis Fleming, Derek Simpson, Amadeo Baldovino and Gregor Piatigorsky. His vast repertory ranges from 19th century staples by Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Dvorák to 20th century standards by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Respighi and Barber. He has also focused much attention on works by British composers such as Elgar, Delius, Bax, Maxwell Davies, MacMillan, Simpson, and Tavener. Wallfisch has recorded extensively for many labels, including Chandos, Nimbus, and Naxos.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/raphael-wallfisch-mn0002030011/biography

http://www.raphaelwallfisch.com/?page_id=35

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