Time to catch up on your Weinberg
mainA rush of four discoveries on the Lebrecht Album of the Week.
Gripping stuff.
And here.
Comments
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Weinberg would be much more considered hadn’t Shostakovich ever existed ! Same thing with Salieri versus Mozart.
He was influenced by his friend Dmitri Shostakovich, so his music would be MUCH different. Maybe his music would sound like Prokofiev. Or Schoenberg. Who knows?
Not quiet the same. Salieri was maybe Europe’s most famous and succesful composer in his times, being Court composer of Austria. On top of that he was a very succesful pedagogue, having had students like Beethoven, Schubert, Hummel, Liszt among many others. He was not exactly what Pushkin and Peter Shaffer have written about him.
However, Salieri was forgotten, as soon as the world rediscovered Mozart.
I don’t think the same will happen with Shostakovich. He was the leading Soviet composer who put many peers in the shadow. The fact that the world is rediscovering Weinberg doesn’t mean that Shostakovich will be forgotten. On the contrary. He already counts as one of the great russian classics. Now we only need more Weinberg.
Possibly. But without Shostakovich he would almost certainly have been murdered by Stalin in 1953. Shostakovich intervened courageously on his behalf after he was imprisoned as part of the “Jewish conspiracy”.
I remember when he was known as Moishe Vainberg. I still have some recordings with that name.
If only Weinberg had had a bit more success when he was still alive. A very tragic existence. I’ve never heard a piece by him that left me indifferent. His violin Concerto is right up there with Berg’s and Bartok’s-one of the 20th century’s greatest. Why is it not part of the repertoire of all our top violinists? Thank you, Mr. Lebrecht, for promoting his music.
Re: the comment below. I wonder if Weinberg would have existed as a composer if Shostakovich had never existed. Fine as his pieces are, they do sound strongly derivative. I am happy to have both in my listening repertoire.