Symphony No.6 in A minor - Mieczysław Weinberg

St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra & Glinka Choral College Boys’ Choir conducted by Vladimir Lande

I - Adagio sostenuto: 0:00
II - Allegretto: 14:48
III - Allegro molto: 22:20
IV - Largo: 29:49
V - Andantino: 37:32

Weinberg's Sixth Symphony was completed in 1963 and was premiered on November 12 of the same year, performed by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the Moscow Choral School children's choir conducted by Kiril Kondrachin. It is the first of a set of six symphonies that use voices. It is dedicated to his daughter Victoria, using a children's choir in the second, fourth and fifth movements. It is a very expressive and intimate work dedicated to children.

Weinberg was no doubt influenced in his approach to the "Jewish Question" by Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony ("Babi Yar"), given its controversial première at the end of 1962. The second movement is a setting of Lev Kvitko, while the fourth and fifth movements set texts by Samuil Galkin and Mikhail Lukonin respectively. Traditional formal archetypes, both in individual movements and over the symphony as a whole, are treated with notable freedom, yet the sense of music that charts a course from innocence to experience can be perceived at both a symphonic and an emotional level: which aspect no doubt impressed Shostakovich, who used the work as teaching material in his own classes.

The first movement is an introduction. It begins with a pensive melody presented by the horns, answered by a hesitant theme of the strings supported by pizzicatos. The theme intensifies, finally passing to the cellos which continue it in a somber way. Wood and metal enter, elevating the music to its climax. The theme continues on the strings accompanied by timpani hits. A flute solo performing whimsical arabesques interrupts the action. Then the motif goes to the horn and then to the clarinet. The recapitulation is started by the low strings, leading to a polyphony, ending with an unresolved dissonance of the flute and strings.

The second movement sets a Kvitko poem which epitomizes care-free youth: a boy making a violin from scraps upon which he plays to an audience of animals and birds. It opens with a whimsical idea shared between the woodwind and strings, which serves as a basis for the nonchalant theme that the choir now takes up against a sparse, yet telling instrumental backdrop. Woodwind and percussion add a vital rhythmic injection that gradually plays itself out, leaving solo oboe then violin to muse uncertainly over timpani before the choir resumes with more fragmentary phrases. Solo violin fleetingly reappears prior to a reveille on trumpet and percussion, with an unexpectedly forceful conclusion.

The third movement begins with a rhythmically trenchant theme on brass and percussion, strings joining them in a hectic dance that soon draws in the whole orchestra for almost the first time in the work. This continues as a series of energetic exchanges, timpani at length initiating a quirkily sardonic theme for upper woodwind and strings, with just the occasional interjection on xylophone, before the earlier theme is intently resumed by woodwind and strings, the music once again involving the full forces on its way to an aggressive close.

The fourth movement (a subtle reworking of the fifth number from Weinberg’s Jewish Songs of 1944) sets a Galkin poem to evoke an image of graphic reflection, where the home once stood is now a graveyard for the murdered children, and will one day serve as a memorial to future generations. It starts with violent fanfares on brass and percussion, subsiding to reveal the choir in a plaintive mood which soon becomes more anguished as the expression intensifies. From here the movement dies down for an evocative passage featuring celesta and woodwind, building to a baleful climax on brass and timpani that collapses into a more consolatory passage with the main theme now on woodwind as the music leads directly into the next movement.

The fifth movement sets a Lukonin poem as a lullaby in which the children of the present and the future, from the Mississippi to the Mekong, are bid sleep in the confidence of a bright and productive tomorrow. It opens with a ruminative idea high in violins and offset by pert woodwind gestures. From here the choir enters with a theme whose wistful manner is enhanced by the woodwind and given further gravitas with its spare accompaniment on lower strings. Elements that were heard earlier tentatively reappear as the choir falls silent and the music loses any remaining impetus, with solo violin rhapsodizing over lower strings and timpani as a virtual stasis is reached. Horn and strings return to their melody from the very beginning, the work ending with a soft dissonance on woodwind and strings that now provides a sense of closure.

Picture: "The Vision to the Youth Bartholomew" (1889-90) by the Russian-Soviet painter Mikhail Nesterov.

Sources: https://bit.ly/2SqWbpm

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