MusicWeb International

The Weinberg renaissance is going from strength to strength. Sadly it wasn’t witnessed by the composer who, at the time of his death in 1996, was almost completely forgotten. Although these three solo violin sonatas are a new experience for me, I see that they have been recorded before, all three by Linus Roth on Challenge Classics, or singly on labels such as Toccata and ECM.

Weinberg’s first venture into the genre, with the Solo Violin Sonata No. 1, Op 82, was in 1964, and a year later it was premiered by its dedicatee Mikhail Fichtenholz. Cast in five contrasting movements, its technical demands on the soloist are unforgiving. Renate Eggebrecht steps up to the mark admirably with an authoritative performance of breathtaking impact. For me, the work has a close affinity with the Bartók Solo Sonata. The first movement is frenzied, harsh and spiky. Its broken chords are vehement and intense and certainly pack a punch. In total contrast the Andante, which follows, is laden with despondency and anguish, with the violin a lonely figure wandering through stark terrain. The third movement is mercurial and flighty, where pizzicatos alternate with lightly bowed figurations. Then comes a Lento, theatrical and declamatory. Here the composer seems to vent his anger, with the finale somewhat in the manner of a moto perpetuo.

It's striking how daring and highly original the Solo Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 95 is. Composed three years later in 1967, its mood is definitely more upbeat than that of its predecessor. Again it was dedicated to Mikhail Fichtenholz. An enigmatic work, Weinberg experiments, summoning up a panoply of contrasting moods over a seven-movement span (Monody; Rests; Intervals; Replies; Accompaniment; Invocation; Syncopes). All the movements are brief, the longest, ‘Invocation’, is of only 3½ minutes duration. ‘Rests’ is unusual, it's stop/start rhythm sounding rather quirky. ‘Replies’ is the most lyrical, interspersed with some squally pizzicatos. Probing introspection informs ‘Invocation’, with Eggebrecht’s vibrant double stops and high position bowing proving viscerally potent, as do the coruscating salvos of ‘Syncopes’.

The composer waited another ten years, until 1979, before his third foray into the medium. The Third Sonata, Op. 126 bears the dedication “To the Memory of my father”. The work is in one extended movement of twenty two minutes. Despite this, many disparate moods are explored, as the listener is taken on an emotionally soul-searching journey. Moments of high drama sit side by side with periods of anguished lyricism. Severe, dissonant and atonal would briefly sum up the sound world. Weinberg's vision isn’t exactly an easy one, and it all amounts to a fairly unsettling experience. Eggebrecht has the full measure of the thorny narrative, grasping fully its complexities. The music is never permitted to sag, with a tight rein maintained as she contours the ebb and flow of its undulating and tortuous narrative.

Alfred Schnittke’s Fugue for solo violin, penned in 1953, offers a pleasing filler. Once again, Eggebrecht’s technique is admirable, not only in achieving flawless intonation, but delineating the contrapuntal strands of this intensely complex short score.

The violin has been warmly recorded in an acoustic which is favourable to the music’s dense intricacies, allowing clarity and definition. The helpful annotations, in English and German, have been written by Egbert Hiller.

This is deeply rewarding music, in imaginative, inspired and resourceful performances.

Stephen Greenbank

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Jul/Weinberg_violin_TROCD01450.htm

Tenderness and severity

Renate Eggebrecht plays Weinberg's unaccompanied violin sonatas

Combining all three of Mieczysław Weinberg's sonatas for unaccompanied violin on a single CD makes eminently good sense, for the direct ties between the music and the life of this Russian composer become all the more vivid. 'Many of my works', he once said, 'deal with war. Unfortunately, this was not my own choice. It was dictated to me by my fate, by the tragic fate of my relatives. I view it as my moral obligation to write about war, about the horrors that humankind suffered in our century.'

Weinberg was born in 1919 in Warsaw, where his Jewish family had moved from Moldavia in 1903. His father worked in Warsaw as a theatre musician, but became unemployed when the theatre shut down in the early 1930s. By the age of 12 the boy was already enrolled at Warsaw Conservatory. But just as he was about to launch a brilliant career as a pianist, the Second World War broke out. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 he fled to the Soviet Union while his family remained behind ... and perished. Then, when German troops marched into the Soviet Union in June 1941, he fled from Minsk to Tashkent. Far removed from the centres of culture, he nevertheless found employment as a vocal coach at the opera. His potential as a composer was also recognised, even reaching the ears of Dmitri Shostakovich. A feeling of mutual trust arose between the two men that would last until Shostakovich's death in 1975.

Weinberg's First Violin Sonata dates from 1964. Though the material deprivations he had suffered gave way to a certain consolidation and security, this period can hardly be called happy. Memories of the key events in his life continually resurfaced, and his isolation and the lack of public recognition for his music remained practically unchanged. Weinberg responded in his own way – with sounds that wind like shrill screams into moments of glittering frenzy, only to be followed by churning turmoil, piercing gyrations, subliminal upsurges and plunges. How different the second movement, with its bleak melodies, its solemn stolidity and its despondence, seemingly devoid of hope. Yet both spheres inextricably intertwine in Weinberg's music: notwithstanding its great technical demands and structural rigour, it never denies its deep seated emotionalism. Viewed in this light, his works turn into mirror reflections of his psyche as programmatic mood swings merge with biographical influences and intricate musical logic.

In 1967, one year before completing his now famous opera The Passenger, Weinberg returned to the solo sonata. Rivalling and even surpassing its predecessor in complexity, Sonata no. 2 subtly projects the moods and feelings of the opera onto the solo genre. Both works, the opera and the sonata, are related in their uncompromising character and expressive force, their duality of tenderness and severity.

Twelve years later, in 1979, Weinberg composed his third and final sonata for unaccompanied violin. Written in a single extended movement, it evokes a stream of opposing feelings and emotions as oppressive as they are enchanting, offering listeners not a moment’s peace or respite on their 'journey' through brittle worlds of sound. In Renate Eggebrecht's performance, it also abounds in pure timbral delights. In the context of Weinberg's three solo sonatas the extra piece on the CD, Alfred Schnittke's Fugue for unaccompanied violin, sounds like a brief but illuminating lagniappe.

Egbert Hiller