If you put this disc
on blind, you might be forgiven for
thinking that the opening group of songs
was by Shostakovich. It has the same
spiky energy and angular melodic outlines.
In fact, they were written by Mieczyslaw
Weinberg, a Polish Jew, and weren’t
in Russian at all. The songs originally
set poems of a Polish Jewish poet, Itzhok
Lejb Perez, who wrote in Polish and
Yiddish. When they were first published
in Russia in 1944-45 (the late Stalinist
period), they were published in Russian
translation and someone called the set
Children’s Songs. In fact there
is very little that is childish about
either the poems or the music but no-one
in Stalin’s Russia was going to call
them Jewish Songs.
Weinberg was born in
Warsaw and fled the Nazi occupation
in 1939. First of all he ended up in
Belarussia where, in Minsk he studied
with a pupil of Rimsky Korsakov. The
Nazi invasion of the USSR forced a further
flight to Uzbekistan whence he was invited
to Moscow by Shostakovich, who had heard
his First Symphony. Weinberg lived in
Moscow from 1946 until his death in
1996. Although never officially one
of Shostakovich’s pupils, his contacts
with the master were very close.
Weinberg composed some
thirty song cycles and this is volume
1 in Toccata Classics planned complete
Weinberg song edition. It should reach
an impressive number of volumes when
it reaches completion.
Weinberg opens the
Children’s Songs, Op. 13
with a wordless Introduction from
singer and pianist, this introduces
the following four songs which are all
relatively light-hearted and carefree;
delightful depictions of children’s
lives, full of Jewish folk inflections.
But at the opening of the next song
the mood changes immediately. This one,
Grief, is the child’s anguished
and puzzled response to a family and
home destroyed by war. Weinberg rounds
this off with a Coda which repeats the
material from the Introduction but this
time in a far sadder tone - a lament
for the land of lost content.
I would have liked
to hear these songs in their original
language, but Olga Kalugina’s account
of them in Russian is everything it
should be. Kalugina has a bright, attractive
rather Slavic-sounding voice which seems
entirely appropriate to this music.
For the Introduction and first four
songs she is perfectly in folk mood
and in the final song her plangent intensity
is profoundly moving. Her upper voice
takes on a rather narrow focus when
under pressure. The result is not unappealing
and rather distinctive though it might
not appeal to everyone. As with most
Slavic voices, Kalugina has quite a
pronounced vibrato but it is not overly
intrusive. The core of her voice is
solid. She displays a good sense of
line when needed but has a lively feel
for the rhythmic nature of some of the
songs.
Beyond the Border
of Past Days, Op. 50, was written
in 1951, between the 1948 anti-formalist
campaign and Weinberg’s arrest in 1953.
Shostakovich wrote to Beria (the head
of the secret police) on Weinberg’s
behalf and Weinberg was released later
in 1953 but did not recover his composing
equilibrium until 1957. These songs
are amongst the few that Weinberg seems
to have written without worrying about
official disapproval. The songs set
poems by Alexander Blok (1880–1921)
a major poet of the late Tsarist and
early Bolshevik period. Blok was a Romantic
with Symbolist leanings. The opening
poem expresses religious exaltation
and the remaining songs are all some
sort of allegory of redemption - dealing
with pain, solace, what has passed and
what remains.
Weinberg’s settings
are rather more sober than the poetry
might imply. They are sung here by mezzo-soprano
Svetlana Nikolayeva who imbues them
with a rich darkness and a feeling of
Russian fatalism. Nikolayeva has a dark
mezzo-soprano voice. Like Kalugina she
has a strong vibrato around a very firm
core of voice. You never feel that you
are in danger of losing the essential
melodic line as you can with some such
voices.
Though these songs
are still in Shostakovich’s aura, there
is a melancholy darkness which is new.
They seem to lack the satiric spikiness
that is a characteristic of Shostakovich.
Sixteen years after composing these
songs Weinberg was in fact the pianist
in the first performance of Shostakovich’s
Blok Romances, Op. 127.
The final group of
songs were written in 1973, two year’s
before Shostakovich’s death. The song
cycle sets poems by Gabriela Mistral
(1889–1957), the Chilean poet and educator.
Mistral was a supporter of the Popular
Front in the Spanish Civil War and so
was ideologically acceptable in the
Soviet Union. These are all lullabies
and Weinberg introduces a rocking motion
in the first song - this continues throughout
the cycle. We seem a long way from late
Shostakovich here.
The vocal line is smooth
and melodic and Weinberg’s harmonic
language has developed a new fluidity
and obliqueness. The poems are not entirely
straightforward. They touch on implied
social comment and the adult’s need
for comfort. Weinberg’s settings accept
this, never making the songs quite the
simple lullabies that they could be.
Kalugina is equally
at home in these late Weinberg songs
and her account, often understated,
can be quite poignant. In all three
song-cycles, the singers are ably accompanied
by Dmitry Korostelyov. Weinberg was
a pianist himself and Korostelyov seems
remarkably unphased by any of the demands
that Weinberg makes of him.
This is a fine start
to Toccata’s Weinberg series. Weinberg’s
music deserves to be better known and
this disc should win many converts for
his alternative view of Soviet modernism.
Robert Hugill
Olga Kalugina (soprano); Svetlana Nikolayeva
(mezzo); Dmitry Korostelyov (piano) 
