ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

‘Uncommon Comrades’: Weinberg and Shostakovich
American Symphony Orchestra cond. Leon Botstein
3 June 2007 , Avery Fisher Hall , New York

Reviewed by Louis Blois
posted 16 July 2007

In the final concert of their current series, Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra presented a programme entitled ‘Uncommon Comrades’ at the Avery Fisher Hall, New York, on Sunday, 3 June 2007 , at 3pm . The concert provided a fitting finale to the Shostakovich centennial season in its musical and social significance and was anything but lightweight. The themes of oppression, anti-Semitism, and mass-execution lay at the heart of the two principal works performed: Mieczysław Weinberg’s Sixth Symphony, listed as the US premiere, and Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, BabiYar . The programme began on a lighter note with Weinberg’s spirited Trumpet Concerto.

Among composers who suffered the brunt of totalitarian regimes, Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg stand among history’s most psychically abused. The scourges of Shostakovich’s life and times are fairly well known. Less familiar is the plight of Weinberg, who had the misfortune of experiencing the torments of two lethal dictatorships. Born to a Jewish family in Warsaw in 1919, he fled the German occupation of Poland in 1939, the same year that he graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory. His mother and sister, who remained in Poland , perished in the Trawniki labour camp. First settling in Minsk , Weinberg was evacuated to Tashkent when the war moved onto Soviet soil. It was there that he met and married the daughter of one of the leading figures of the Yiddish theatre and of Jewish intellectual life, Solomon Mikhoels. Both Mikhoels and Weinberg would fall victim to Stalin’s post-War campaign against the Jews. Mikhoels was murdered in 1948. In February 1953 Weinberg was imprisoned on charges related to his involvement with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, of which Mikhoels had been chair.

Those who think Shostakovich hid safely behind a public mask of obedience might consider that it was he who risked the worst by interceding on Weinberg’s behalf. Shostakovich’s letter to the much-feared chief of Soviet police, Lavrenti Beria, according to some, saved Weinberg from certain execution. (The conductor Kyrill Kondrashin claimed that Shostakovich ‘inundated’ both Stalin and Beria with letters of support for his friend.) At the time Shostakovich feared for his own safety and was high on the list of disgraced composers who, in 1948, had been publicly admonished for their ‘formalist’ tendencies. Weinberg was released and ‘rehabilitated’ shortly after Stalin’s death in March of 1953.

The lifelong friendship between the two had begun ten years earlier when Weinberg, then living in Tashkent , sent Shostakovich the score of his First Symphony (we are still waiting for a recording of it). Duly impressed, Shostakovich encouraged Weinberg to move to Moscow . His good fortune in obtaining an apartment just a few steps from Shostakovich’s facilitated a vigorous and ongoing creative exchange. The two shared daily conversations about their compositions. A recording of the four-handed piano version of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony performed by both composers offers a glimpse of their artistic solidarity.

Weinberg was prolific in many genres, as his 26 symphonies and seventeen string quartets attest. The obvious Shostakovich influence reveals itself as merely superficial inasmuch as Weinberg is an original with a distinct musical personality. Both composers make prominent use of dance-forms within an expressive, freely diatonic language that incorporate strong rhythms, frequent syncopation and brilliant orchestration. Still, the strong Jewish element in Weinberg’s music along with differences in instrumentation and formal strategies set the two composers apart. Less obvious is the influence exerted in the opposite direction. Commentators have noted Weinberg’s impact on a variety of Shostakovich’s works – for example, the Second Cello Concerto, Second Violin Concerto and the Fourteenth Symphony. It can even be argued that Shostakovich’s preoccupation with Jewish themes in his work from the 1940s, culminating in the song-cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, stemmed from his acquaintance with Weinberg’s music. Shostakovich was attracted to the Jewish idiom in part for its multivalent quality, its ability to simultaneously express emotions of widely different character. He also used the idiom to identify himself symbolically with the Jews as fellow victims of oppression, as outsiders who, like the fraternity of artists, threaten to disrupt the social order.

‘Uncommon Comrades’ brought together two major works that reflect the solidarity of spirit, morality and aesthetics of the two composers. Leon Botstein, in his note for the concert, points out that the Weinberg Sixth Symphony of 1963 would be ‘unthinkable’ without Shostakovich’s Thirteenth, written the year before: the Shostakovich, in effect, paved the way for the Weinberg. Yevtushenko’s poem, ‘ Babi Yar ’, and Shostakovich’s setting of it broke a long-standing silence on the part of the Soviet government about the massacre that took place at the Ukrainian ravine of that name. At this location on the outskirts of Kiev , 33,771 Jews perished at the hands of the Germans over a two-day period in September 1941. The poem cites institutional anti-Semitism for the absence of an official monument.

The Symphony consists of settings of five Yevtushenko poems, including ‘ Babi Yar ’, dealing with issues that could only have been raised in the wake of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation campaign. The work nonetheless put the veneer of liberalisation to the acid test as Yevtushenko was coerced into changing the text of ‘Babi Yar’ to reflect the fact that subsequent executions at the site included many non-Jewish victims. Though the work was performed for a while in both its original and revised form, Shostakovich never agreed to the changes. It was never officially banned, but for many years performances remained few and far between. It is current practice to perform the work using the original, unaltered text, as it was at the ASO concert.

In the second movement, ‘Humour’, symbols of authority are skewered in a derisive fashion for their inability to suppress one of Shostakovich’s favourite expressive devices; ‘At the Store’ sympathises with the arduous detail of women seeking basic supplies; ‘Fears’, specially commissioned by Shostakovich, wryly points to new fears arising in Russia to replace old ones; and finally, in ‘Career’, figures such as Galileo and Pasteur are celebrated for having the courage to preserve the integrity of their vision. The relevance of each of these verses to Shostakovich’s own life and times is self-evident.

Botstein achieved a few distinguishing moments in an overall strong, well paced version of the work. His tempi in the opening ‘ Babi Yar ’ movement were a bit measured. But slow tempi happen to work exceedingly well in this music, especially at the climax, which Botstein expanded to quite monumental proportions. Although he didn’t allow the post climactic passage enough time to exhale and recover, he did take a longer than usual pause at the pivotal point just before the moment of the recapitulation. The choice made the climax all the more powerful. The peak moments of ‘At the Store’ and ‘Fears’ were handled with similar grandeur. ‘Humour’ was also taken at a measured pace, neither too fast nor too slow, with lively results. The quick interactions within demonstrated excellent co-operation between the soloist and chorus. Botstein elicited a strong performance from the Concert Chorale of New York. The baritone soloist, Sergei Leiferkus, sang without score and was in full command of the part, having recorded the work at least twice, first with Masur and again with Sondeckis. He was robust and defiant where called for in the first two movements and sensitive enough in the ‘At the Store’ setting, whose atmospheric effects were superbly handled by Botstein. Also, he was especially engaging in ‘Career’, at one point turning around to face the chorus in their brief ‘Lev? Lev!’ exchange. Still, I wish he had taken more risks with the role. As part-cantata, part-opera, part-symphony, Shostakovich’s Thirteenth invites many a style of interpretation. Leiferkus, whose vocal tones I find exceedingly well suited to the part, prefers a kind of ‘symphonic’ formality. But I’ve heard other soloists extract more from the part with a more effusive, operatic approach.

Whereas Shostakovich’s Symphony consists of climactically directed movements that more or less adhere to classical forms, each movement of Weinberg’s Sixth unfolds as a freely flowing stream of lyrical episodes. His music seeks its resolution more through lyrical transformation rather than confrontation. One either submits to this open sea of glorious music or not. When Shostakovich heard the work he exclaimed, ‘I wish I could sign my name to this Symphony’. Like the Shostakovich Thirteenth, Weinberg’s Sixth is also cast in five movements and scored for orchestra with expanded vocal forces – a bass soloist and male chorus in the Shostakovich, a children’s chorus in the Weinberg. Each incorporates texts that take up the subjects of anti-Semitism, genocide and regeneration.

An expansive horn theme, melancholic and yearning, is introduced at the outset and recurs as an idée fixe throughout the five movements. The ruminating first movement, the longest, forms a prologue of richly contemplative lyrical episodes. The uplifting second movement, a setting of ‘The Little Fiddle’ by Lev Kvitko (1890–1952), introduces the image of a fiddle fashioned out of twigs and discarded wood that when played celebrates the unfiltered joys of childhood. As if to continue the rural evocation, especially that of the shtetl, the third movement unfolds as a series of rambunctious village dances steeped with the inflections of Jewish music. Listeners will hear affinities to one or another Shostakovich scherzo, or more specifically, to the friskier sections of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which Weinberg must certainly have heard in its recently revised and performed version as Katerina Izmailova. The emotional nucleus arrives in the fourth movement, which sets ‘In the red clay there is a hole…’ by Samuil Galkin (1897–1960), where a fateful three-note falling theme brings these verses about tormented and innocent blood spilled to a stirring moment of intensity. The fifth and final movement, a setting of ‘Sleep, people…’ by Mikhail Lukonin (1918–76), tentatively reaches out from the ashes to look forward to a brighter day. The final verse, ‘Violins will play of peace on earth’, and the return of the opening horn theme bring the work to a poignant conclusion.

Botstein connected strongly to Weinberg’s sumptuously lyrical, distinctly Jewish idiom. In a work whose many melodic tributaries run the risk of wandering astray, he steered the line with a consuming sense of mission and captured all the vitality and abundance of Weinberg’s haunting journey of innocence betrayed. The many chamber-like passages flowed seamlessly while allowing almost every principal soloist, from bass clarinet to piccolo, opportunities to capture the moment and display their admirable virtuosity. If hearing heart-rending verses sung by a children’s chorus moves you, you can just imagine how much more moving the experience can be hearing and seeing the chorus on stage. The Brooklyn Youth chorus, consisting of (almost) all girls were seated in two rows of chairs in front of the orchestra, and brought all the magic and heartbreak to the work that Weinberg put into it. One may still be able to find stray copies of Kyrill Kondrashin’s energetic account of the work with the Moscow PO on Olympia ( ocd 471); or the 1988 Jerusalem Records release ( scd 8005) of Yuri Ahranovich and the Jerusalem SO. The latter version, sensitively shaped, bears the unique feature of being sung in Hebrew. It is otherwise sung in Russian.

When I heard Timofei Dokshitser’s performance of Weinberg’s Trumpet Concerto on a Melodiya/HMV/Angel LP sometime in the early 1970s, I immediately knew that this was a composer whose music I wanted to hear more of. I also felt I would never hear a performance of the work projecting as much pizzazz as Dokshitser’s virtuoso account, and a recent (2000) recording of the work on Chandos, featuring a less than memorable Bibi Black in the solo part, only reinforced that opinion. It thus came as a delightful surprise to hear the resident trumpeter of the ASO, Carl Albach, take charge of the work with such brilliantly snappy playing. Botstein took the first movement, ‘Etudes’, at a cracking pace, keeping well in tow the spastically disjointed but wildly exhilarating motivic material. The final movement, ‘Fanfares’, quotes, in clipped form, trumpet flourishes from Rimsky Korsakov’s operas Tsar Sultan and The Golden Cockerel, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. Albach kept part of his tongue buried well into his cheek as he took up each of the quotes in the canny spirit in which they were intended: part comic one-liners, part moody montage. The spacious, atmospheric effects of the middle movement, ‘Episodes’, were admirably conveyed by soloist and conductor.

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