Intégrale des quatuors à cordes

Description

Today we discover the work of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish composer born in 1919 in Warsaw and who died in 1996 in Moscow, with an epic and tragic fate. The son of a Jewish musician father who worked in the theaters of Warsaw, he studied piano with Józef Turczynski at the city conservatory. In 1939 he fled the invasion of the German troops to reach Minsk in Belarus. He fled again to Uzbekistan and then finally settled in Moscow. There he found the support of Israël Finkelstein, who introduced his first scores to Shostakovich in 1943. A long and fruitful friendship began between them, ending with Shostakovich’s death in 1975. “I consider myself his pupil, his flesh and blood,” Weinberg would say of him. In 1953, Weinberg was imprisoned under Stalin’s regime because of his family ties, then regained his freedom thanks to his friend’s support. From the 1960s onward, his music was performed by the greatest: Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Kogan, Kondrashin, Barchaï and the Borodine Quartet. He finally received official recognition in 1971 and then in 1990. A humble and hardworking composer, Weinberg is the author of an abundant body of work: seven operas, numerous symphonies, chamber music including this corpus of 17 string quartets. His style is plural and highly personal. Trained at the conservatory, Weinberg has a classical musical culture, he skillfully uses counterpoint, does not hesitate to draw inspiration from dodecaphony, but his music is above all imbued with Jewish folk traditions, especially (in the manner of a Bloch), but also Polish, Russian and Moldavian ones. One also obviously finds the touch of the revered Shostakovich in many quartets. And of Prokofiev as well. A tribute and parallel with Bartók’s contemporary quartets. Certain tropes illustrate the richness of Weinberg’s style: motifs and melodies always of great inventiveness, movement structures very open and divided into free sections (the fifteenth quartet has nine movements, the eighth, only one!). The forms are varied: toccatas, passacaglias, marches, sarabandes, interludes, preludes, and treated according to sophisticated harmonic schemes. Weinberg explores in depth the timbres and colors of each instrument. Mutes always have a rhetorical role. The dynamic contrasts are highlighted and affect the course of thematic development, creating a kind of bipolar character: peaks of intensity precede or follow phases of depression, often ending with meditative and resigned cadences. One easily moves from a somewhat forced unbridled frenzy to a flat and morbid nostalgia. Expressionism maintained within an admirable formal framework. So begin with volume 3 and quartets no. 6 (where a strict fugue alternates with klezmer accents), 8 and 15, true experimental gems of deeply moving lyricism, which very well sum up the spirit of Weinberg’s music. The Quatuor Danel has notable experience performing this repertoire. They have notably recorded a complete cycle of Shostakovich’s Quartets (Fuga Libera). They combine pedagogy, virtuosity and intuition. Drawing on their deep knowledge of the composer’s work, their vision scrupulously respects the states, moods, climates and atmospheres of this rare and fascinating music. (Jérôme Angouillant)