Symphonic Re-Visions

There is a growing interest in the music and figure of Mieczyslaw Weinberg. An unjustly undervalued composer, he lived in ostracism for a large part of his life and was harshly criticised for political and ethnic reasons. Due to his modest Jewish-Polish origins, he was a Soviet target of anti-Semitism and of Stalin's persecution of artists who fell out of favour with the regime. The composer never heard his Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra. Op. 42. Although it was composed in 1948, it was premiered in Moscow in 1999 and recorded for the first time in 2007 by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. It stands out for its simple lyrical structure, possibly conditioned by the risk of any indication of over-intrepid formalism or experimentation, moving between joviality and tragedy, and irony and severity. Weinberg is doubtlessly one of the Soviet Union's major composers, alongside Shostakovich, Jachaturian and Prokfiev.