Mieczysław Weinberg (also
Moisey Vainberg, Moisey Samuilovich
Vaynberg; ; ) (December 8
1919 in Warsaw
– February 26 1996 in Moscow
) was an
important Soviet
composer of Polish
-Jewish origin.He lived in the Soviet Union
and Russia
since 1939
and lost most of his family in the Holocaust.
He left a large body of work that included twenty-two
symphonies and seventeen
string quartets; according to one reviewer he
ranked as, "the third great Soviet composer, along with
Prokofiev and
Shostakovich".
Names
Much confusion has been caused by different renditions of the
composer's names.
In the Polish language (i.e. prior to his
move to the USSR), his name
was spelled as 'Mieczysław Wajnberg' whereas in the Russian language (i.e. after the move) he
was and still is known as 'Моисей Самуилович Вайнберг' (Moisey
Samuilovich Vaynberg). Among close friends he would
also go by his Polish diminutive 'Metek'. Re-
transliteration of his surname from the
Cyrillic alphabet
(
Вайнберг) back into the
Latin
alphabet produced a variety of spellings, including 'Weinberg',
'Vainberg', and 'Vaynberg'. The form 'Weinberg', as the most
frequent English-language rendition of this common Jewish surname,
is now being increasingly used, notably in the latest edition of
Grove and by
Weinberg's biographer, Per Skans.
Life
Weinberg was born in 1919 to a
Jewish family in
Warsaw.
His father, Shmil (or Shmuel) Wajnberg
(1882-1943), moved to
Warsaw from Chişinău
a decade before Weinberg's birth and worked as a
violinist and conductor for a Yiddish theatre in Warsaw, where the future
composer joined him as pianist at the age of 10 and later as a
musical director of several performances[92891]. The family had already been the victim of
anti-semitic violence in Bessarabia
— some members of his family were killed during the
Kishinev pogrom.
Weinberg
entered the Warsaw
Conservatory
, studying piano, at the age of
twelve, and graduated in 1939. Two works (his first
string quartet and a berceuse for piano) were composed before he
fled to the Soviet
Union at the outbreak of war. His parents and sister remained behind and
perished in the Trawniki concentration camp
. He settled in Minsk
, where he
studied composition for the first time at the Conservatory
there. At the outbreak of the World War II on the
Soviet territory, Weinberg was evacuated in Tashkent
(Central Asia), where he wrote works for the
opera, as well as met and married Solomon Mikhoels' daughter Natalia
Vovsi. There he met
Dmitry
Shostakovich who was impressed by his talent and became his
close friend. Meeting Shostakovich had a profound effect on the
younger man, who said later that, "It was as if I had been born
anew".In 1943 he moved to Moscow at Shostakovich's urging.
Weinberg's works were not banned during the
Zhdanovshchina of 1948, but he was almost
entirely ignored by the Soviet musical establishment; for a time he
could make a living only by composing for the theatre and circus.
In February 1953, he himself was arrested on charges of "Jewish
bourgeois nationalism" in
relation to the arrest of his father-in-law as a part of the
so-called "
Doctors' plot":
Shostakovich wrote to
Lavrenti Beria
to intercede on Weinberg's behalf, as well as agreeing to look
after Weinberg's daughter if his wife wеre also arrested. In the
event, he was saved by Stalin's death the following month, and he
was officially rehabilitated shortly afterwards.
Thereafter Weinberg continued to live in Moscow, composing and
performing as a pianist. He and Shostakovich lived nearby, sharing
ideas on a daily basis. Besides the admiration which Shostakovich
frequently expressed for Weinberg's works, they were taken up by
some of Russia's foremost performers, including
Emil Gilels,
Leonid
Kogan,
Mstislav
Rostropovich,
Kurt Sanderling,
and
Kirill Kondrashin.
Towards the end of his life, Weinberg suffered from
Crohn's disease, although he continued to
compose. He reportedly converted to
Orthodox Christianity shortly before
his death.
Works
Weinberg's output includes twenty-two
symphonies, other works for orchestra (including
chamber symphonies and sinfoniettas), seventeen
string quartets, eight
violin sonatas (three solo and five with
piano), twenty-four preludes for cello and six
cello sonatas (two with piano and four solo),
six
piano sonatas, numerous other
instrumental works, as well as more than 40 film and animation
scores (including
The Cranes are
Flying,
Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film
Festival, 1958). He wrote seven
operas, and
considered one of them,
The
Passenger (written in 1967-68, premiered in 2006), to be
his most important work. His
piano
quintet,
piano trio and cello works
have received performances in concert series and festivals across
Europe and the USA in recent years, and the British record label
Olympia released over fifteen
compact disc recordings of his music, consisting of both original
recordings and remasterings of earlier Melodiya LPs.
Weinberg's works frequently have a strong
programmatic element: throughout his life he
continually referred back to his formative years in Warsaw and to
the war which ended that earlier life. Typically, however, this
darkness serves as a background to the finding of peace through
catharsis. This desire for harmony is also
evident in his musical style; Lyudmilla Nikitina emphasises the
"
neo-classical, rationalist
clarity and proportion" of his works.
Although he never formally studied with Shostakovich, the older
composer had an obvious influence on Weinberg's music. Explicit
connections include the pianissimo passage with
celesta which ends the
Fifth Symphony, reminiscent of
Shostakovich's
Fourth
and written around the time of that work's premiere. Another
Weinberg work, his sixth piano sonata, quotes one of the
Shostakovich
Preludes and Fugues.
More general similarities in musical language include the use of
extended melodies, repetitive themes and extreme
register. This has been one of the main
criticisms voiced of Weinberg: Alexander Ivashkin has argued that
composers such as Weinberg damaged not only their reputations, but
also that of Shostakovich himself: "these works only served to kill
off Shostakovich's music, to cover it over with a scab of numerous
and bad copies".
Nevertheless, Shostakovich was not the only influence on Weinberg's
style. Nikitina identifies
Prokofiev,
Myaskovsky,
Bartók and
Mahler as other influences, while the
trumpet concerto quotes
Mendelssohn's well-known
Wedding March. Ethnic influences include not
only
Jewish music, but also Moldavian,
Polish, and Armenian elements. Weinberg has been identified by some
critics as the source of Shostakovich's own increased interest in
Jewish themes.
References
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