Mieczyslaw Weinberg (Polish: Wajnberg) wrote his first string quartet in May 1937.
(...)In the summer of 1941, Weinberg was forced to flee for a second time. On this occasion, he made his way to Tashkent, to where members of the Leningrad Conservatory were also evacuated in the autumn. In December, he had an opportunity to hear his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 3 performed by these exiled musicians. Afterwards, the work probably ended up in a drawer and was shown only to composer-friends, which would explain the similarity between this piece and certain episodes from Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartets Nos. 2 and 6, written at a later period when both composers maintained close contact. Forty-five years later, Weinberg returned to the material of his youth. Using the experience he had gained over the past decades, he made certain alterations. He changed very little in the first two movements: he made a few abbreviations, developed certain themes in a slightly different way, and added variety to others by complementing existing parts with new ones; sometimes he also changed the articulation or register. He then added a new movement in the form of a short delicate intermezzo (largely through playing con sordino and the abundance of rests between the short motifs). Relatively speaking, he made the most changes to the existing finale. And it is this new version of String Quartet No. 2, this time assigned opus number 145, that the Silesian Quartet performs on this disc.
(...)
At the end of September 1943, the fugitive from Warsaw settled in Moscow. It was not his first stay in Moscow, as he had been there earlier, in 1940, as a delegate from Minsk for an event called the Decade of Belarusian Art. It was there that he met Nikolai Myaskovsky, regarded as a leading figure in the Moscow composer community, and on his return to Moscow he naturally immediately renewed that acquaintance. Soon, he also found himself in frequent contact with Shostakovich, who had moved permanently to Moscow a few months earlier (Leningrad was still under siege). Weinberg was admitted to the Composers’ Union, which was a very important step, as it opened up opportunities for performing and publishing his new works. In February 1944, he began work on his first “Moscow” piece, String Quartet No. 3, Op. 14. At the time, this was a popular genre among Soviet composers – string quartets were being penned both by older composers, including Myaskovsky, and members of the younger generation, such as Yuri Levitin, a friend of Weinberg. These new scores quickly found willing performers among the many excellent musicians based in Moscow at the time.
(...)
The Bolshoi Theatre Quartet performed String Quartet No. 4, which was dedicated to the ensemble, on 19 January 1946. In 1959, the work appeared in print as Weinberg’s first published quartet, and four years later it was discussed by Lev Raaben in a monograph on Soviet chamber music. In keeping with the trend of the time, what he primarily heard in the piece were the echoes of war. The two opening movements were intended to reflect the enemy invasion and a heroic mood. The funeral march in the third movement seemed obvious given the programme of the work, and the finale was interpreted by Raabe as a reminiscence of a carefree childhood, although most listeners tend to associate it with the beginning of Mendelssohn’s Octet; we do not know whether this was deliberate or accidental. Twelve years later, Ludmila Nikitina interpreted the Quartet differently. Above all else, she was struck by the echoes of Jewish music recognisable in the second movement. Her sensitive ear proved to be closer to the composer’s own intentions, as years later Weinberg used this very movement in his Symphony No. 21, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, entitled Kaddish, which means a prayer for the dead.
Danuta Gwizdalanka

ACD 291 Track07 Wajnberg String Quartet No  3 Op  14 - III  Allegretto

It is my profound belief that one can discover meaning in life by reflecting on death and the evanescence of our existence. It is only by contemplating death and accepting it that we may find peace of spirit and mind. Such contemplation makes it possible to view death in a different light, to find deeper sense in it, and prepare for its coming. The transition to another dimension, that of eternal life, is a stage that comes as natural to every Christian.
This is why my own musical statement about the dead is contemplative in mood, full of hope, optimism, and love.
In my Requiem, I have consciously omitted the section known as Dies irae. As its title (‘Day of Wrath’) suggests, this sequence is filled with pain and suffering that accompany a bloody, apocalyptic vision of the Last Judgment. My Kyrie eleison, on the other hand, has been constructed rather untypically (following consultation with a theologian), namely – in the manner of a joyful greeting addressed to the Risen Christ, the victorious King, to whom
we offer our thanks and whom we glorify for the reconciliation that he brought about. It is thus conceived as a triumphant acclamation, as homage and adoration, the way it functioned in the original liturgy, though in our present-day tradition this call is normally understood as a grave and sorrowful supplication for mercy rather than an act of adoration.

Krzysztof Herdzin
Translation: Tomasz Zymer

ACD 333 - Track 01 - Herdzin - Requiem - Introitus 44k - 16b

‘I and God... ’
An orchestral debut, one of numerous song cycles and finally a short yet massive vocalinstrumental work. Years spanning their dates of inception: twelve. Significantly greater span – between the dates of their premieres, interspersed by greater and lesser historical events, most notably the First World War and both Russian revolutions, along with a series of personal trials and reappraisals of the artist’s spirituality, as well as bad luck and
unfavourable circumstances.
What – apart from the author – links these works? Seemingly very little, yet certain common threads can be found. Among them that each of the three works is linked to a degree with some kind of specific literary text. ‘Some kind of’ that is to say different in each instance. Songs of a Fairy Princess is a clear example of a ‘musical setting’.
Symphony No. 3 subtitled ‘The Song of the Night’, has at its core the text of a Persian mystic, yet is fundamentally an instrumental work capable of being performed without voices. 
What about the Overture? In keeping with the spirit – or manner – of the era, the first version of the work was preceded by a poetic motto from the poem Witeź Włast by Tadeusz Miciński (1873–1918), a close friend of the composer, a cult figure in today’s slang and in yesterday’s stricter definition, a type of ‘magus’, and one of the leaders of Polish modernism at the turn of the 20th century. In the climactic point of his verse Miciński wrote about ‘the proud and brutal triumph’ of his hero, not quite the legitimate descendant of a Nietzschean superman. Later – like in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 – the motto disappeared. Perhaps just as well. Triumph? Undoubtedly, even infused with pride, however bloody sacrificial stones or any brutality are nowhere to be found in the sunlit E major of the Overture.

Rafał Augustyn
(transl. by Anna Kaspszyk)

ACD 315 - Track 10 - Szymanowski - Symphony No. 3 ‘The Song Of The Night’, Op. 27

ACD 291 Track07 Wajnberg String Quartet No 3 Op 14 - III Allegretto

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