Joanna Klisowska, Katarzyna Neugebauer - Weinberg: Songs (2025)
FLAC (tracks), Lossless | 1:04:11 | 257 Mb
Genre: Classical
The overdue revival of interest in Mieczysław Weinberg has focused on his chamber and orchestral music, with periodic revivals of pivotal operas such as The Passenger. As this new recording illustrates, song was no less significant as a facet of his creative personality, beginning with the cycle of Akazie (Acacias), which the 21-year-old Weinberg composed in 1940, having lately fled Warsaw and briefly settled in Minsk.Each a minute or two long, the six Akazie unleash a passion out of proportion to their brevity. Weinberg later said that he wrote them as a distraction from the tragedy around him, but they speak of their time in their angular, expressionist vocal writing and supple, chromatic accompaniments. Most of the Jewish Songs Op.13 are similarly concise and direct, though their alternative title of ‘Children’s Songs’ hints at the lighter and more playful idiom.