Reply To: The Classical Music Thread
In HMV, maybe ten years ago, I noticed a Naxos disc of someone called Mieczysław Weinberg, whose Symphony no 12 is subtitled “In memorium D.Shostakovich”, which at any point since the late seventies would have raised my eyebrows.
Being Naxos, it was cheap enough to take a risk on, so I bought it and listened to it in the car, expecting a load of Shostakovich quotations. There were hardly any obvious ones; a chord here, a hint there. But the noise it made was (heh) music to my ears.
In no time at all, I’d bought every Naxos Weinberg disc I could find – symphonies, concertos, string quartets, sonatas. Some of the chamber music hasn’t properly landed with me yet, but the majority of it is fantastic. Some favourites:
Cello concerto – a beautiful klezmer-inflected first movement with three energetic following movements, written for and premiered by Rostropovich.
Third Symphony – If you’re a fan of Sibelius, this will be a revelation, fresh air and mountains, quite unlike most Soviet-era works.
Violin concerto – opens with a frantically urgent first movement, and the rest of it is close in intensity but more introspective.
Eighth Symphony “Polish Flowers” – a song cycle, which normally wouldn’t appeal that much, but this is so melodic and dramatic that I find it thoroughly haunting. It’s dedicated to the young Polish victims of Nazi atrocities.
Several of the Naxos discs have short fillers, all of which are enjoyable.
Weinberg was a friend of Shostakovich, not a pupil, and the two “competed” from the 50s through to Shostakovich’s death, demo-ing their symphonies and string quartets to each other. Sadly, Weinberg (also sometimes spelled Vaynberg) doesn’t feature in many musical encyclopaedias. There isn’t a single work of his in the 2026 proms programme, for instance, and he’s never on Classic FM, which is a shame because he deserves to be more widely known.