WEINBERG : Chamber Symphonies • Piano Quintet (Kremerata Baltica, Gidon Kremer) 2CD (2017) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica ensemble may be best known for Piazzolla, but they have also specialized in the rediscovery of neglected East Bloc composers. The Polish-born Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a follower of Shostakovich who was much championed by his mentor, doesn't quite qualify as neglected, but much of his music, including the late chamber symphonies recorded here, has awaited persuasive performances. The chamber symphonies aren't quite a genre in themselves, the first three are arranged from earlier Weinberg string quartets, while the 1992 Chamber Symphony No. 4, Weinberg's last completed work, is original. It's a fascinating piece, with a triangle sounding the strokes of approaching death at the end. The Piano Quintet, Op. 18, of 1944, is presented in an arrangement for string orchestra and, notably, percussion; the word "arrangement" doesn't seem strong enough for what's happening. This is the place to start sampling, for there are all kinds of junctures where the music sounds like Shostakovich, but veers off into something decisively different. The work is, like Shostakovich's roughly contemporaneous piano quintet, in five movements, but they are not Shostakovich's five. Sample one of the two scherzo-like movements for the superficially Shostakovich-like effect. The substantial 14-plus-minute "Largo" does not have Shostakovich's bitter grimness, but an altogether nonpareil, very subdued lyricism. The performances, conducted by Kremer except for the final chamber symphony, are wonderfully sensitive, and the engineering, from Vienna's venerable Musikverein, is, as you expect from ECM, superb. If you were thinking of passing this up because it consists mostly of arrangements of obscure repertory, well, the arrangements make sense (and have precedent in the realm of Shostakovich), and the repertory isn't going to be obscure for much longer. by James Manheim  

Chamber Symphony No. 3 Op. 151    
Chamber Symphony No. 2 Op. 147
Chamber Symphony No. 1 Op. 145
Piano Quintet Op. 18
Arranged By – Andrei Pushkarev, Gidon Kremer
Percussion – Andrei Pushkarev
Piano – Yulianna Avdeeva
Viola – Santa Vižine
Violin – Dainius Puodžiukas, Džeraldas Bidva
Violoncello – Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė
Chamber Symphony No. 4 Op. 153
Clarinet – Mate Bekavac
Conductor – Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Triangle – Andrei Pushkarev

Bass – Iurii Gavryliuk, Kristaps Pētersons
Music Director [Artistic Director], Violin [Principal Violin] – Gidon Kremer
Orchestra – Kremerata Baltica
Percussion – Andrei Pushkarev
Viola – Ingars Ģirnis, Vidas Vekerotas, Zita Zemoviča
Viola, Leader [Group Leader (Viola)] – Santa Vižine
Violin – Agata Laima Daraškaitė, Aliona Rachitchi, Anna Maria Korczyńska, Dainius Peseckas, Lina Marija Domarkaitė, Madara Pētersone, Marie-Helen Aavakivi, Miglė Marija Serapinaitė, Sanita Zariņa, Semen Gurevich
Violin, Concertmaster [Violin] – Džeraldas Bidva
Violin, Leader [Group Leader (Violin)] – Andrei Valigura, Dainius Puodžiukas
Violoncello – Maruša Bogotaj, Pēteris Sokolovskis, Pēteris Čirkšis
Violoncello, Leader [Group Leader (Violoncello)] – Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė

WEINBERG : Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21 (Gražinytė-Tyla, Kremer) 2CD (2019) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg has received renewed attention, especially as the centenary year of his birth in 2019 approached. He has hardly received better advocacy than he gets here from the sensational young conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla in her first recording for Deutsche Grammophon, and first as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Weinberg lost most of his family in the Holocaust; he himself fled to the Soviet Union, where he wasn't exactly well treated, but survived and became closely acquainted with Shostakovich. The two mutually influenced each other, but it is surprising how individual Weinberg's style remained. The Symphony No. 21, Op. 152 ("Kaddish") was worked at by Weinberg for some time and was completed in 1991, a few years before his death. The work is dedicated to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II and has the feeling of a personal memorial. It is almost unrelievedly grim, although it has an episodic quality deriving partly from its association with a film about the ghetto. You would not pick the youthful Gražinytė-Tyla as an interpreter, but this is an extraordinary reading. The finale has a kind of wordless keening for soprano, which Gražinytė-Tyla takes herself. There is no way to know what Weinberg had in mind for the work, but the effect of her chorister's voice is extraordinary here. A factor adding a personal quality to the performance is the presence of violinist Gidon Kremer, who has championed Weinberg's music, and who here appears not only as the leader of his Kremerata Baltica in Weinberg's Symphony No. 2 for string orchestra, Op. 30, but also takes the violin solo part in the Symphony No. 21. It is as though the Weinberg baton was being handed on to the next generation. The Symphony No. 2 itself is an elegant string serenade that draws more on interwar Czech and Polish music than it does on Shostakovich. The work of Kremerata Baltica and the CBSO here seems almost to mesh, and this is an extraordinary debut overall. How is Gražinytė-Tyla going to follow it up? by James Manheim

Symphony No. 2 (Opus 30, 1946) (34:21)
Conductor – Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Orchestra [String] – Kremerata Baltica

Symphony No. 21 (“Kaddish”, Opus 152, 1991) (54:38)
Clarinet – Oliver Janes
Conductor, Soprano Vocals – Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Double Bass – Iurii Gavryliuk
Orchestra – City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Orchestra [String] – Kremerata Baltica
Piano – Georgijs Osokins
Violin – Gidon Kremer