Lebrecht Weekly | Mieczyslaw Weinberg: String quartets 6, 13, 15 (Chandos)

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What small labels do best is backing the owner’s hunches. BIS in Stockholm produced symphonies by Alfred Schnittke when he was unheard outside Russia. Hyperion in south London resurrected 19^th century piano concertos. Cedille in Chicago backs off-beat US composers. Manfred Eicher’s ECM in Munich is the engine behind Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli and Chick Corea. These labels are often thelion kings of classical recording.

We owe the rediscovery of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish refugee in Soviet Russia, to a father-son team in Colchester, England, operating from a mobile recording unit. Their company, Chandos, released its first Weinberg recording around the turn of the century and has hardly paused since. A set of the complete 26 symphonies was interrupted, but the 17 string quartets are nearing completion in the hands of the Bucharest-based Arcadia Quartet.

The sixth quartet, dated 1946, is among the longest and most enthralling. Unperformed for six decades, it encapsulates the composer’s dual emotions on the end of war and the renewal of Soviet terror. A quiet thanksgiving for peace is interrupted by rasping orders and hints of brutality. Weinberg perhaps over-dramatises the first and sixth movements, but there is always a new half-melody to tweak the ear and a promise of survival. The finale offers exceptional beauty.

The single-movement 13th quartet was composed after the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, Weinberg’s mentor and protector, in 1975. It amounts to an intimate tribute, enriched with quotations from Shostakovich quartets. The 15^th quartet, from 1979, is wilfully enigmatic, lacking a word of description for each movement, which veer from rage to silence.

The Arcadians are fine players. If they slightly overdo the raw anger in this music, their passion is mitigated by a profound intuition of the composer’s ambiguities. I learn more with each listening. The courage of the Couzens family at Chandos deserves a medal. They recently sold the company to Naxos founder Klaus Heymann.

This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en: Francais (French)