Albums

Mieczysław Weinberg
Three Palms / String Trio / Trumpet Concerto No. 1 - Weinberg Edition Vol. 5

NEOS 11129
July 2011

Mieczysław Weinberg was born in 1919 in Warsaw. His father Samuil was a Jewish musician who made a name for himself as the leader of a Yiddish theatre and as a violinist; the mother was a pianist.

By the age of ten Mieczysław had already made appearances as a pianist, and as a 12-year-old he was given a place in the conservatoire. In 1939, shortly after he had completed his final examinations, the war broke out, and he was forced to flee from the Germans, leaving Warsaw. His parents and his sister, who was likewise a musician, were deported from the Warsaw ghetto and sent to the forced labour camp Trawniki, where they were murdered in 1943 when the camp was liquidated.

Weinberg himself managed to reach the Belorussian capital of Minsk, where he studied Composition under Vassili Solotarjov, a pupil of Balakirev and Rimski-Korsakov. After his final examinations in June 1941 Weinberg had to flee again following an attack by the Germans on the Soviet Union.

In the Uzbek capital of Tashkent he worked as a correpetitor at the opera and became acquainted with his future wife, Natalya. In 1943 the married couple moved to Moscow, where Weinberg belonged to the narrowest circle of friends of Dmitri Shostakovich, who called him “one of the excellent composers of our times”.

In Moscow Weinberg worked in a secondary school as a freelance composer and appeared now and then as a pianist. On 6th February 1953 he was arrested and subjected to vague anti-Semitic accusations. Stalin’s death one month later saved his life.

Weinberg was to live another 43 years, remaining in Moscow up to his death in February 1996. He attained a significant position among Soviet composers in spite of his foreign roots.