Violin Solo, Vol. 9

Eggebrecht, Renate

There are composers whose lives were marked by the cataclysms of the ‘short twentieth century’; there are composers who deserve far more space than they have been allocated in histories of music; there are composers who were exceptionally prolific. Mieczyslaw Weinberg presents a rare case of all three in one. What makes his legacy so inspiring is the depth of its humanity and the quality of its artistic imagination. Weinberg was born in 1919 in Warsaw, where his Jewish family had moved from Moldavia in 1903. His father worked as a theater musician. By the age of 12, the boy was already enrolled at Warsaw Conservatory and studied piano with Jozef Turcynski. But just as he was about to launch a brilliant piano career, the Second World War broke out. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 he fled to the Soviet Union while his family remained and ultimately perished. Just as he completed his composition degree, German troops marched into the Soviet Union and he fled to the Uzbek city of Tashkent. There he made his living as a vocal coach, and eventually a composer.

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