Dip Your Ears, No. 113 (Mieczysław Weinberg)

M.Weinberg, Symphony No.17, V.Fedoseyev / VSO NEOS SACD 11126

Weinberg Edition No.2:

Mieczysław Weinberg, Symphony No.17, "Allegro Moderato" (excerpt), Fedoseyev et al., NEOS

Symphony No.17 was premiered under Vladimir Fedoseyev—but like most of his Mieczysław Weinberg recordings (14, 17, 18, 19), the Olympia imprint of that occasion is almost impossible to come by. Thanks to the 2010 Bregenz Festival documents, we now have new live recordings of him in the Requiem (see "Dip Your Ears, No. 112"), the Sixth and this 17^th Symphony.

In turns tartly lyrical and spine-chillingly brutal, the greatly varied 50+ minute long 17^th, “Memory”, alludes to an Anna Akhmatova poem. Large scale eruptions, easily as mighty as those in finales of Shostakovich, sit side-by-side with delicate elements, like that episode for winds and piano in the second movement, or the tinkling celesta in the fourth. Since Chandos hasn’t gotten to No.17 yet, and Naxos’ Weinberg cycle probably won’t start for a while, this is the only reasonably available 17^th – which makes it important beyond the terrific performance of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

All the NEOS Weinberg releases are on SACD. Either expensive or unavailable on ArkivMusic and Amazon.com, they are most easily and inexpensively gotten via Amazon.co.uk