Polish-Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg wrote his Requiem a few years after he became familiar with
Britten's War Requiem, and although the two works have little in common musically, they share a strong anti-war sentiment because of their choice of texts. Weinberg sets poems by a nationally diverse set of writers: Dmitri Kedrin (Russia), Federico García Lorca (Spain), Sara Teasdale (U.S.), Munetoshi Fukagawa (Japan), and Mikhail Dudin, a Soviet contemporary of the composer's. The piece was never performed during Weinberg's lifetime and had to wait until 2009 for its premiere. The composer and
Shostakovich were close friends, and it's easy to trace a musical kinship with
Shostakovich in the dark tone and musical vocabulary of the Requiem. It's a more starkly modernist piece than
Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony, written for similar forces a few years before, more eccentrically spare in its practically skeletal orchestral and vocal textures, and even darker emotionally. The accompaniment for the second movement, for instance, consists almost entirely of a harpsichord and glockenspiel playing a single line in unison over a very low drone. The last movement, based on what was undoubtedly an obligatory Soviet text, is more energetic and more robustly orchestrated but is hardly optimistic in tone. The Requiem requires large performing forces but Weinberg uses them with great discretion and delicacy. The
Vienna Symphony, the Prague Symphonic Choir, the
Vienna Boys' Choir, and soprano Elena Kelessidi deliver a gripping performance under the leadership of
Vladimir Fedoseyev. The sound of the live recording from the 2010 Bregenz Festival is mostly clear but the choruses and soloist sound a little distant.