Weinberg - Symphony No.3, Golden Key (Suite No.4)
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Label: Chandos
Cat No: CHSA5089
Format: Hybrid SACD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Orchestral
Release Date: 3rd May 2011
Contents
Artists
Gothenburg Symphony OrchestraConductor
Thord SvedlundWorks
Symphony no.3 in B minor, op.45The Golden Key Suite no.4, op.55d
Artists
Gothenburg Symphony OrchestraConductor
Thord SvedlundAbout
Born in Poland into a Jewish family, Mieczysław Weinberg fled before the German invasion in 1939 and spent most of his working life in the Soviet Union, where he was a friend and neighbour of Shostakovich who did much to champion his music.
He composed his Third Symphony between 1949 and 1950, shortly after the launch of Andrey Zhdanov’s ‘anti-formalism’ campaign which exhorted all Soviet composers to produce music for the People, i.e. in a broadly comprehensible language, preferably drawing on folk material. Weinberg obliged by placing a Belorussian folksong (‘What a Moon’) as a contrasting theme in the first movement, and a mazurka-like Polish folksong (‘Matek has died’) at the corresponding point in the second; the latter then transformed to produce the main theme of the finale.
This nod in the direction of official recommendations still was not enough to ensure a performance of the symphony. The premiere which had been scheduled to take place in Moscow was postponed. Later, Weinberg was said to have discovered a number of ‘errors’ during rehearsals and therefore made the decision to cancel the performance. Perhaps this was simply an attempt to cover up official pressure to withdraw the work, perhaps not. In any case, Weinberg revisited the material ten years later, and the revised version was first heard in 1960 in the Great Hall of the Conservatory in Moscow, performed by the All-Union Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gauk.
Weinberg composed the ballet The Golden Key in 1954–55 on a popular tale by Aleksey Tolstoy, which mixes elements of the story of Pinocchio with that of Petrushka, hinting too at Jack and the Beanstalk. The music itself can be heard as a gallery of the great Russian masters of orchestration, Weinberg taking us on a journey of Tchaikovskian waltzes, Rimskian brass works, flashes of Stravinsky’s Petrushka in the winds and in some of the dance rhythms, and gorgeous adagios of the sort Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet taught Russian composers how to write.
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