The three sonatas for solo violin by Mieczysław Weinberg, written in 1964, 1967 and 1979, are among the most demanding 20th-century works for the unaccompanied instrument. Here they are played by Gidon Kremer, a key figure in the revival of Weinberg's music, who ranks these pieces with Bartók's solo sonata. The album was issued for Kremer's 75th birthday, and it presents the cycle in reverse order, so that the listener travels back from the late, single-movement Third to the more classical First.
The recordings come from two places and two moments. The Third Sonata, Op. 126, was captured live at the Lockenhaus chamber music festival in July 2013, with Peter Laenger engineering, and first appeared on ECM's 2014 double album of Weinberg's music with Kremerata Baltica. The First and Second were recorded in December 2019 at Studio Residence Paliesius in Lithuania. Kremer plays a Nicolò Amati violin of 1641, Manfred Eicher was executive producer, and the booklet has texts by Kremer and Wolfgang Sandner.
The Third Sonata is dedicated to the memory of the composer's father, who died at Trawniki in 1943. It runs for over twenty minutes without a break, mixing Bach-like rigour with something close to the Yiddish theatre of Weinberg's youth. The Second, Op. 95, is a set of seven short movements with plain titles, Monody, Rests, Intervals, Replies, Accompaniment, Invocation and Syncopes, each built on the idea its title names. The First, Op. 82, in five movements, keeps closest to the model of Bach's sonatas and partitas, ending with a Presto after a slow Lento.
In The Strad (2022), Julian Haylock described the live Third as "so fearless in its no-holds-barred intensity that at times one fears for the safety of his instrument". David Smith at Presto noted that none of the sonatas is easy listening, yet called the release "a fitting summation of his work to date in advocating for Weinberg's music". Kremer himself writes that Weinberg's output remains "a constant source of enthusiasm and inspiration" for him.
This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2705, released on 18 February 2022.
