Composer
Biography:
Mieczyslaw Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1919. His father, Samuil Weinberg, was a Jewish musician who made a name for himself as a director of a Yiddish theater and as a violinist, and his mother was a pianist.
At the age of ten Mieczysław appeared as a pianist and at the age of twelve he was admitted to the conservatory. In 1939, shortly after he had passed his final exams, war broke out and he had to flee Warsaw from the Germans. His parents and his sister, who was also a musician, were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Trawniki forced labor camp, where they were murdered in 1943 during the liquidation of the camp.
Weinberg himself first came to the Belarusian capital of Minsk, where he studied composition with Vasily Solotaryov, a student of Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov. After his final exams in June 1941, he had to flee again when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union.
In the Uzbek capital Tashkent he worked as a répétiteur at the opera and met his wife Natalija. In 1943 the couple moved to Moscow, where Weinberg belonged to the closest circle of friends of Dmitri Shostakovich, who called him "one of the outstanding composers of our time".
In Moscow Weinberg worked mainly as a freelance composer and occasionally performed as a pianist. On February 6, 1953, he was arrested and charged with vague anti-Semitism. Stalin's death a month later saved his life.
Weinberg lived in Moscow for 43 years until his death in February 1996 and, despite his foreign origins, achieved an important position among Soviet composers.
Albums:
Three Palms / String Trio / Trumpet Concerto No. 1 – Vineyard Edition Vol. 5:
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 2 / Piano Quintet – Weinberg Edition Vol. 4:
Requiem – Weinberg Edition Vol. 3:
Symphony No. 17 “Memory” – Weinberg Edition Vol. 2:
Symphony No. 6 / Sinfonietta No. 1 – Vineyard Edition Vol. 1:
Sonatas for Viola Solo – Sonata op. 28:
