Weinberg: Works for Cello & Orchestra

Album review

Mieczysław Weinberg, a composer whose extraordinarily prolix repertoire contains over five hundred works, has been resurfacing over the years after being lost to history. Born in Warsaw in 1919, Weinberg suffered the brunt of Hitler’s hatred and had to flee to the USSR, but his entire family remained behind and were subsequently killed in Nazi concentration camps. He was soon forced to flee once again, this time hiding in Uzbekistan, where he was supported by Shostakovich but was still the victim of anti-Semitic persecution. The power of Weinberg’s music was recognised by many great Soviet musicians who then spread the word in the 1960s for others to play it. He died in great poverty in Moscow, 1996, due to ill health. As the number of musicians performing his works has increased in recent years, his musical stature has now risen to the same level as that of Shostakovich and Bartók. The works recorded here are part of an edition devoted to cello concertos composed by exiled Jewish composers, under the patronage of English cellist Raphael Wallfisch. Written in 1948 and premiered by Rostropovich, the meditative, sombre and tense Cello Concerto, Op. 43, gradually integrated itself into the repertoire of a new generation of performers. The Concertino, which was composed the same year in record time, wasn’t premiered until 2017 and merges Jewish folklore with Polish folk music. © François Hudry/Qobuz