Following the success of the Weinberg Symphonies 2 & 21 with conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Deutsche Grammophon now features chamber music by Mieczysław Weinberg under the direction of Gidon Kremer.
Included among others are his “Three Pieces for Violin and Piano”, which Weinberg completed in the winter of 1934/35 when he was only 15 years old and had not yet received any compositional training. What connects Weinberg’s works is not only their compositional perfection, but above all their constant commitment to beauty. It is a confession that in Weinberg’s music is above all pain and suffering.

With 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, 9 concertos, and 7 operas, the composer Mieczysław Weinberg left behind an extensive oeuvre. Musically, one can hear the composer’s close friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich, although Weinberg’s music is more lyrical and romantic in nature. Nevertheless, the composer was long forgotten and his music has only been rediscovered in the last ten years. Gidon Kremer has dedicated himself to the rediscovery and cultivation of Weinberg’s music.

Weinberg always acknowledged Shostakovich as his source of inspiration. The three movements of his Violin Sonata No. 1 cover the path from C minor to C major, a popular route in Soviet academic tradition and one also taken by Shostakovich with a colossal effect in his Symphony No. 8 during the course of the same year. Weinberg’s Violin Sonatas 2 and 3 continue to reveal his creative ambitions.

Trio Khnopff writes of this new release: Weinbergs Trio was one of the first big pieces we played together, and it has remained a unanimous favorite. The huge emotional spectrum, the quality and originality of the writing, the instrumental challenge, the composer himself (a young man facing the greatest personal and societal challenges) this all comes together in his Trio to create a work that resonates deeply with us and that has been something of a constant companion. The idea of dedicating our first album to Weinberg, and more precisely to the pivotal time around 1945, felt like a natural one.

The East-West Chamber Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Yuri Bashmet International Music Festival and is made up of concertmasters from leading orchestras and competition laureates. On this, their debut recording, they celebrate the centenary of Mieczysław Weinberg’s birth. Weinberg’s Chamber Symphonies reflect his creativity and the dramatic times in which he lived—the formal lucidity and directness of the First and the elegiac Third—both derived from string quartets composed in the shadow of the Second World War.