Given that Shostakovich and Vainberg were musically close, closer even than, say, Prokofiev and Miaskovsky, it would be easy to make the mistake of assuming that the works recorded here are more derivative than is in fact the case. Stylistically, Shostakovich looms large in Vainberg’s Second Symphony (1946), but the basic model cannot be the hyped-up Barshai-Shostakovich string quartets - those lay in the future. Rather there are technical and expressive parallels with Honegger’s wartime Second Symphony for strings with trumpet obbligato. Intriguingly, Gavriil Popov’s contemporaneous Third is also for strings alone. Vainberg’s strings are augmented with timpani in the much later Chamber Symphony No. 2 of 1987. Not too much should be read into the nomenclature: while the composer chose not to emulate Miaskovsky’s high total of 27, he stated that his chamber symphonies were no different in character from the string- (or augmented string-) scored works in his main symphony sequence: Nos. 2, 7 and 10.

These Swedish renditions are respectable but they do not have the authority of the Russian recordings that have featured in earlier volumes of this series. Although we have heard much that is technically flawless from young Scandinavian groups, the Umea orchestra is still finding its feet and Vainberg’s propensity for eruptive ‘Jewish’ solos taxes the orchestra’s leader. The Second Chamber Symphony receives the more secure performance and uncommitted listeners should definitely try to sample its central panel, a ghostly Pesante that crosses a Prokofiev ballet number with a Mahlerian landler. Vainberg’s music is exceedingly well-crafted, with a grace and elegance not always associated with Shostakovich himself. What it lacks, by and large, is memorable thematic invention.

David S. Gutman
(From: Gramophone, February 1999)