Search - Vainberg, Fedoseyev, Ussr Radio Symphony Orch :: Vainberg: Symphony 17

Little Known but First Rate

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 11/20/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Mieczyslaw (né Moses) Vainberg (1919-1996) formed part of the background of Dmitri Shostakovich's moral-political dissidence. DSCH's friend from 1943 on, Vainberg escaped the Nazi holocaust in Poland only to be imprisoned by Stalin's paranoid security service as a suspect alien. Released, he married the daughter of the Yiddish actor Solomon Mikhoels, whom Stalin then had murdered in 1948 as part of the build-up to an anti-Semitic pogrom checked only by the dictator's death in 1953. Some of DSCH's interest in Jewish folklore probably stemmed from Vainberg, who, ironically, converted to Christianity in the last decade of his life. Musically, Vainberg belongs to what we might call "the Shostakovich school." Although he wrote in all genres, he concentrated on the symphony and the string quartet; he tends toward the heterogeneous sonorities that we also find in DSCH, and a dark irony similar to that of the older composer also informs Vainberg's vocabulary. Vainberg uses quotations aplenty, as does DSCH, often relying on the tune's association with words to create an esoteric "message" to be deciphered by savvy listeners. An example of this occurs in the tone-poem "The Banners of Peace" (1986), written for the 27th Party Conference of the Communist Party of the USSR, where Vainberg quotes the song "Warsawa," sung by the Red Army during its unsuccessful invasion of Poland in 1922. Thus, the score in celebration of the Party's peaceful intentions surreptitiously reminds its audience that one of the Party's earliest acts on taking power was to attack a neighboring country, Vainberg's own at the time. "The Banners of Peace" appears on an Olympia CD paired with Symphony No. 17, "Memory" (1982) belongs to a trilogy encompassing also Nos. 18 and 19. Symphony No. 17 begins (Adagio) with an extraordinary polyphonic threnody for strings alone, lasting over three minutes, until a quieter, although no less tragic, music appears with woodwinds at last entering into the texture. The scherzo (Allegro Molto) that follows explores an atmosphere of rarified mystery; it deploys spectral ostinati throughout and juxtaposes improvisatory sounding lines for woodwinds with many grotesque effects in the brass and percussion. Vainberg filters Mahler through DSCH, so to speak. A brief interlude (Allegro Moderato) leads to the longish Finale (Andante): Here the trials, the demonism, of the foregoing movements give way to a pastoral mood, not entirely discharged of all anxiety, but commemorative and largely quiet as in the Passacaglia-Finale of DSCH's Symphony No. 8. As for "The Banners of Piece," Vainberg cuts it (pardoning the metaphor) from the same cloth. Vladimir Fedoseyev obviously believes in this music and elicits fine performances from the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra. The recordings comes from 1984 and 1986."