Shostakovich called him ‘One of the most outstanding composers of today’. The Polish-Jewish-Russian composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) has also been called ‘the greatest composer you’ve never heard of’. From October 2019, Wigmore Hall highlights this strikingly prolific composer’s contribution to instrumental music and song with an ambitious Weinberg strand, programmed by the Hall’s Artistic & Executive Director John Gilhooly, over two seasons.
The centenary of Weinberg’s birth in 2019 has seen the composer’s profile raised in the UK and beyond, triggering a reappraisal and rediscovery of this strikingly prolific composer. His music was championed during his lifetime by such outstanding performers as David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Emil Gilels, the Borodin Quartet, Kirill Kondrashin and Shostakovich.
Highlights of the Weinberg centenary in 2019 have included the Polska Music-supported new release of Weinberg Chamber Music on Deutche Grammophon (DG), performed by Gidon Kremer, Yulianna Avdeeva and Giedre Dirvanauskaite. Polska Music also supported the debut release from conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on DG featuring Weinberg’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 21, recorded with Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This year’s BBC Proms also featured the critically-acclaimed London premieres of two pieces by Weinberg – his Cello Concerto, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sol Gabetta, and his Symphony No. 3, performed by Gražinytė-Tyla and the CBSO.
This year. Polska Music also supported the Israeli premiere of Weinberg’s only opera. The Passenger, based on true events and told from the perspective of a former Auschwitz camp guard – and which Opera Now magazine described as having ‘one of the greatest moments in 20th-century opera’.
On 26th October 2019, Wigmore Hall in London will present a major Weinberg Focus Day, one of the most ambitious retrospectives of the composer’s chamber music ever staged and the most extensive collaboration between Polska Music and a leading British cultural institution. The weekend will provide an in-depth exploration of Weinberg’s contribution to instrumental music and song, and it will be led by violinist Linus Roth, a long-time champion of the composer’s art.
Hailed by The Guardian as one of the ‘standard-bearers’ of the Weinberg revival, Roth will perform Weinberg’s Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano with José Gallardo, along with Sonata No. 1 for Violin Solo and his Largo for Violin and Piano. Roth and Gallardo are joined by Russian soprano Ilona Domnich for the afternoon concert, performing Jewish Songs, Weinberg’s settings of the Soviet Yiddish poet Shmuel Halkin. Roth also performs Sonata No. 2 for Violin Solo and is joined by violinist Janusz Wawrowski for Sonata for Two Violins. Roth’s focus on Weinberg concludes with the third and final concert if the day, which opens with Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano performed with Gallardo.