WEINBERG: Piano Concerto No 2; String Quartet, Op 55

Osorio, Jorge Federico;
BBC Singers;
Kiesler, Kenneth;
Bowers-Broadbent, Christopher;
Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra;
Mason, Patrick;
Bingham Quartet;
Rickenbacher, Karl Anton

8.559457

Weinberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Major clearly illustrates some of the aesthetic ideals of the Jewish national art music movement in Russia. A virtuoso showpiece modeled on piano concertos by quintessentially Russian composers, with their established developmental techniques, use of pianistic figuration, and sweeping gestures, it is based on easily recognizable Judaic melodic and rhythmic materials. The first movement is built upon two basic but unrelated elements of centuries-old canonized Ashkenazi liturgical melos: a fragmentary motif of biblical cantillation (the oldest stratum of Ashkenazi musical tradition), and one of the most easily recognizable seasonal leitmotifs of the Ashkenazi rite—a recurrent tune from that portion of the Yom Kippur liturgy known as the seder avoda that describes the elaborate atonement ritual conducted by the High Priest in the ancient Temple according to the book of Leviticus. Known as the avoda or v’hakohanim tune, this familiar motif belongs to the category of missinai tunes that together with biblical cantillation, forms the underlying historical bedrock of Ashkenazi musical practice.

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

Naxos

10-04-2006

636943945728