Chamber Sinfonies I & II, Concertino for Violin

It is not easy to describe the unique magic of Mieczysław Weinberg's music. Closely intertwined with his biography, which is marked by the painful traces of the upheavals of the 20th century, his compositions seem to be a musical reflection of his life. And yet they defy all too obvious interpretations. This music is too complex and ambiguous, as technically demanding as it is fascinating. Sometimes contradictions become audible - for example, when Weinberg in his darkest hours finds a musical language that expresses lightness and joy. This is the case, for instance, in his Concertino Op. 42, which was composed in the summer of 1948. From a biographical perspective, this period marks the moment when the growing antisemitism of the Stalinist regime, which had been clearly noticeable since the end of the war, began to directly affect Weinberg. At the same time, in the spring of 1948, the music world also came under the control of censorship as part of a propaganda campaign orchestrated by Soviet leadership. The focus was on Weinberg's close friend Dmitri Shostakovich, who was one of the most important representatives of an alleged "formalist" and "anti-popular" musical movement. In an attempt to ward off suspicion, Weinberg wrote in March 1948 one of the mandatory and painful self-confessions in which he admitted his "errors" and promised to adapt his style to official expectations. To underscore these statements, he composed around the same time his Sinfonietta No. 1 Op. 41 - a work that stands out in Weinberg's oeuvre for its straightforwardness and simplicity. But just a few months later, in June 1948, Weinberg composed the Concertino Op. 42. Unlike the Sinfonietta, however, this composition can in no way be described as a strategic work of political calculation ... (Excerpts from the booklet)