World Premiere Recordings

Anatol Vieru's sixth symphony, Exodus, arose in a period of downfall and decline, just before the collapse of the régime associated with the name of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu:

It was composed between 1988 and 1989 and is influenced by the atmosphere of that era. The more I worried, the more obvious it seemed to me that an exodus was taking place around me, a mental exodus for some, a real, physical exodus for others. I transferred this impression of departure to the world I absorbed every day through the river of words emitted by the various radio broadcasters. To me, the image of exodus seems to be the emblem of this turbulent century. (Anatol Vieru)

While the title Exodus fits the subject of this urgent music, it does not characterize Vieru's actual life. Exactly the opposite is the case. This Rumanian composer, who died in 1998, was concerned throughout his life with finding a place in the society of his native country and exercising an influence from there through his music. His early international successes helped him to realize this dream. In 1962 he became the first Rumanian after the Second World War to receive an international composition prize: the Prix International Reine Marie-José, awarded in Geneva for his First Cello Concerto. Since then his music has crossed borders. The same applies to the era of the 'Iron Curtain', when his music was heard all the way from the Soviet Union to the United States – a considerable achievement.
Vieru was not only subjected to the general harassment that befell figures of world stature. Like all his colleagues, he was able to work only as a member of the semi-governmental Rumanian Association of Composers. Like them, he had to endure censorship, travel restrictions, ideological strictures and surveillance. But in his case the fate of Rumania's Jewish population was deeply engrained in his life – and indirectly in his music.

Yet we should take care not to draw hasty conclusions. Throughout his life Vieru fought against political misappropriation – and against attempts to pin a Jewish identity on him because of his family background. He felt that the world, and music, must remain open to change. That is why he also turned his back on the fashions brought about by the mass media: the reduction of his creativity to a recognisable trademark, the limited subjectivity typical of many Western composers, for whom personal feelings and perceptions become the measure of all things.
This basic stance had direct repercussions on the nature of his music. Vieru was opposed to the isolation of sound, which, he felt, merely forms the surface of music, the veneer on a well-conceived structure of objective quality. Paradoxically, it was precisely this attitude that allowed him to create such unique sounds in his symphonic output.
Vieru's sixth symphony, Exodus, is a work of enormous dimensions. Its four movements, each representing a self-contained symphonic work in its own right, last a full hour in performance. His creative energy is especially apparent in his ability to relate seemingly disparate and contradictory things into a plausible musical context, thereby overcoming cultural and historical limitations.

Thomas Beimel


PREMIÈRE PARUTION MONDIALE DE LA SIXIÈME SIMPHONIE D’ANATOL VIERU chez TROUBADISC

Jacques Drillon écrit dans l’OBS au sujet de cet événement exceptionnel

ANATOL VIERU Sixième symphonie (Horia Andreescu) Le Roumain Anatol Vieru (1926-1998) a composé sa sixième et avant-dernière symphonie, Exodus, dans la période qui a immédiatement précédé la chute de Ceaușescu. De dimensions énormes (une heure), elle frappe par le caractère à la fois brutal et sarcastique propre aux œuvres écrites sous régime totalitaire. Les idées se pressent, le désir les fait exploser, la frustration et la souffrance affleurent comme un prurit que rien ne vient apaiser. Et parfois, I’horizon se fait désertique. Musique visionnaire, puissante, impressionnante.

WORLD'S FIRST RECORDING OF ANATOL VIERU’S SIXTH SYMPHONY

JACQUES DRILLON writes in Nouvel Observateur about this outstanding event

ANATOL VIERU SIXTH SYMPHONY (Horia Andreescu, coductor) The Romanian composer Anatol Vieru wrote his Sixth symphony, Exodus, (his penultimate one) during the period immediately preceding the fall of the dictator Ceaucescu. The piece — at almost an hour, an impressively lengthy one — is striking by its violent, almost brutal power and sarcasm, characteristic of works written under totalitarian regimes. Ideas abound, press, and crowd each other, they explode in a suffering that nothing can

NZ 4-2015
recommendation

ANATOL VIERU
SYMPHONIE VI EXODUS | MEMORIAL
Romanian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Horia Andreescu; Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, Ludovic Bács

Troubadisc TRO-CD 01446

Come talk to composers from Romania, so falls at most the name George Enescu (1881-1955). The Grand Master of the next generation, Anatol Vieru (1926-98) is, in this country rather unknown. All the more necessary the excellent edition of his 6th Symphony op. 112th.
Anatol Vieru comes from the town of Iaşi in the countryside of Moldova, where he survived one of the cruelest massacres of allied with Nazi Germany regime with 15 years. But he expressed his life not to his Jewish origins nor to the pogrom. The Romanian participation in the Holocaust did not fit into the picture of history of the Communist People's Republic, which enabled him to study at Aram Khachaturian in Moscow. Only once did Vieru on the blind spot: with the 1991 premiered in Israel Chamber Orchestra piece Memorial op 118, which he dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.. In which he merges diatonic, chromatic and microtonal sound elements gradually, he is the utopia space that once dressed Lessing in the ring parable of Nathan the Wise.

Who the (the Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky been appropriated) 6th Symphony Exodus hears for the first time, can not stop marveling. Although it takes almost an hour - each set initially acts like a tone poem for themselves - they get bored for a moment. Unwittingly she transfers her vast breath, their epic serenity, but also the showers of the third set on the handset. Also, and not least thanks to the conscientious work of the conductor Horia Andreescu samples with the outstanding symphony orchestra of the Romanian Radio.

In the transition period 1988/89 composed that he experienced as partly mental, partly physical exodus, the work draws primarily from three sources: the Old and New Testaments, the frescoes by Francisco José de Goya and two essays of the Romanian writer Horia Vintilă, in 1945 emigrated. For this purpose, the composer (Translated from French):

"I was touched by some of his essays. The one about the tango, let the slight shudder [frisson] feel that adheres to the genre regional and global. The first movement of the symphony, (33 Variations), combines two Spanish classes. The second movement, perhaps from the Biblical appeal [the title] Exodus takes advantage, is a symphonic poem. Another essay influenced the third set. While Horia talks about Goya's fresco San Antonio de la Florida [the title of the 3rd movement], he draws attention to the herd-like size, has only scorn and derision for the preaching of the Holy. The year before, I had to find out the terrible grimness in the church at Madrid. The tension of the third movement takes place in the latter part [bleaching sun] to rest - if not catharsis, yet relaxing, a shadow of hope."

Cogent one could hardly characterize the internal program of the symphony Exodus.

Lutz Lesle

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Translation: Google

MusicWeb International, August 2016

Here you can read a review of our CDs Anatol Vieru Vol.1, TRO-CD 01446 and TRO-CD 01449 Vol.2.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/Aug/Vieru_v12_TROCD01446.htm