Weinberg: Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 4

The music of 20th-century Polish composers from Witold Lutoslawski to Henryk Górecki holds a special place in the Warsaw Philharmonic’s heritage, alongside its critically acclaimed performances of the great orchestral classics. The musicians now bring their expertise in this repertoire to the music of their countryman Mieczysław Weinberg, who relocated to the Soviet Union in 1939 and escaped persecution in his homeland, but lost most of his family in the Holocaust. Only in recent years has he been hailed as the most significant Soviet composer after Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Although Weinberg’s music bears traces of the acerbic wit, melancholy and grotesquery associated with Shostakovich, his lively, neoclassical idiom remains accessible in the manner of film music. The Symphony No. 4 in A Minor (1957, rev. 1961) is rich in dance rhythms and folk melodies. The renowned Russian virtuoso Ilya Gringolts is soloist in Weinberg’s dramatically charged Violin Concerto (1959).