Mieczysław Weinberg - Works for Cello & Orchestra (Raphael Wallfisch)

Information

Composer: Mieczysław Weinberg

• Cello Concerto, Op. 43
• Fantasy, Op. 52
• Concertino, Op. 43bis

Raphael Wallfisch, cello

Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra

Łukasz Borowicz, conductor

Date: 2020

Label: CPO

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Review

Raphael Wallfisch has made it his ‘life mission as a cellist to champion the music of Jewish composers who were silenced by the infamous Third Reich and were forced to flee their homelands to survive’. Wallfisch himself is from a family of Holocaust survivors, and the carefully chosen cover illustration is Felix Nussbaum’s wonderful Die Vertriebenen (‘The displaced people’), painted not long before the artist, his wife and his parents all perished in Auschwitz. Such credentials make criticism seem almost immoral. And the circumstances in which Weinberg’s cello concertante works were composed redouble those credentials, since they show that the Soviet Union was no easy refuge from the Nazi invasions he had so narrowly escaped (from his native Warsaw in 1939, then from his two-year exile in Minsk).

The Concerto is the more expansive 1957 version of the 1948 Concertino, which latter had to go into cold storage as a result of Zhdanov’s anti-formalism campaign, until its recent rediscovery and premiere. Skilful though the expansion is – and effective in the concert hall, as the Concerto’s 2019 Proms outing proved – the more modest original layout does seem truer to the relatively undemonstrative nature of the material. Both versions gain emotional resonance from the fact that Weinberg’s adopted homeland had turned against him during one of its ghastly flirtations with anti-Semitism. That he embraced the option of resolute self-rehabilitation rather than self-pity shines through the music. The confiding lyricism of the Fantasy also has a special aura, having been composed during the last throes of Stalin’s anti-Cosmopolitan campaign when Weinberg was arrested and incarcerated in the Lubyanka and Butyrka prisons for two and a half months.

All three works carry discreet echoes of klezmer idiom, alongside those of Polish dances, as if to confirm the composer’s determination to remain true to his roots at the same time as ticking the boxes of compulsory folk-popular tunefulness. Even the superficially rather routine upbeat finale of the Concerto ultimately gives way to wistful regret: which is to say to emotional truthfulness.

It is possible to imagine more passionate, extrovert interpretations (the classic Rostropovich for the Concerto, Marina Tarasova for the Concertino), but Wallfisch has a fine feeling for Weinbergian interiority, and there is no doubting his depth of feeling throughout. The convenience of having all three of Weinberg’s concertante cello works on the same disc speaks for itself.

— David Fanning

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Mieczysław Weinberg (8 December 1919 – 26 February 1996) was a Polish-born Soviet and Russian composer and pianist. Born in Warsaw to a family connected with Yiddish theatre, he fled Poland in 1939 following the German invasion and settled in the Soviet Union, where he gained the support of Dmitri Shostakovich. Weinberg became a prolific and respected composer, particularly during the 1960s, when his concert and film music achieved considerable recognition. His later years were marked by declining health and reduced official support. International appreciation of his music grew significantly in the 1990s.

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Raphael Wallfisch (born 1953 in London) is an English cellist whose career took off after winning the Gaspar Cassadó Competition at age 24. He has performed with major orchestras worldwide and worked with leading conductors, building a vast discography with labels like Chandos, CPO and Naxos. Known for championing British and lesser-known repertoire, he has premiered works by many contemporary composers. Wallfisch is also a respected educator, serving as Professor at the Royal College of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire, and frequently sits on international competition juries. He plays a 1733 Montagnana cello.

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