After Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Russia’s third great composer….
mainThe more I hear, the more I am convinced that Mieczyslaw Weinberg deserves to be ranked with the other two giants of the 20th century. Gidon Kremer feels much the same. His new double-release is my Album of the Week on sinfini.com
Click here to read.
No offense towards Weinberg intended – but what about Stravinsky?
…or, for that matter Rachmaninoff, still after all these years one of the top half-dozen twentieth century composers in the standard repertoire.
Having said that, I do agree that Weinberg has been seriously underestimated.
… or Silvestrov, Saifiddinov, Schifrin, Schnittke, Scriabin, Shaporin, Shaposhnikov, Shchedrin, Sitsky, Sviridov or of course Grechaninov.
Great performance of Weinberg’s fourth symphony in Berlin last night with DSO/Sokhiev…
RW2013 – Yes, we were there too, in a group, and we all agreed . The music, although sprinkled with Shostakovich, is indeed so good, what a pity it comes too late for Weinberg to enjoy such success.
And what an excellent conductor and orchestra. Indeed a great night.
I couldn’t agree more, Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s music is great. His symphonies or his string quartets as well. And not to forget the “The Passenger” opera.
Weinberg’s violin concerto is right up there with Berg’s and Bartok’s in terms of quality and scope. What a pity that one never hears his works in the concert-hall. There exists a stunning Leonid Kogan recording of it. Why is it not part of the repertory?
Then ?
4th Myaskovsky (1881-1950)
5th Shebalin (1902-1963)
Of course Weinberg (born in Poland) is one of those composers active in Russia whose name gets mangled in the transition from the Roman alphabet to Cyrillic and back again – Moishei Vainberg is the same man.
Nocolai Roslavets
Sorry. Nicolai.
Gubaidulina? Schnittke?
Schnittke, without a shade of doubt …
We started performing Weinberg with the NJK a couple years ago. Wonderful! But he is finally arriving in the repertoire. About time!
It is quite sad to see that most comments here are concerned about the ranking and not the greatness of Weinberg’s music. To those who bring up Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, the title of the post it misleading. Weinberg , together with Prokofiev and Shostakovich are three giants of Soviet music (even if Weinberg lived a few years after the collapse of the USSR). But, I beg you to stop these rankings and competitions, which Weinberg would have hated, and try to discover the range of his 154-opus oeuvre, and the depth of his musical language.