Mieczyslaw Weinberg: String Quartets, Vol. 6 (2012)

The music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, who fled the Nazis and endured persecution from Stalin (although, as annotator David Fanning points out here, he regarded the Red Army as his savior), has increased sharply in popularity. Weinberg is part of Shostakovich's stylistic universe and, although the relationship was never a formal one, said that he regarded himself as Shostakovich's pupil. Yet he was no clone. Jewish motifs play a role in some of his music, and in the string quartets here, especially the String Quartet No. 12, Op. ... Read More

The music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, who fled the Nazis and endured persecution from Stalin (although, as annotator David Fanning points out here, he regarded the Red Army as his savior), has increased sharply in popularity. Weinberg is part of Shostakovich's stylistic universe and, although the relationship was never a formal one, said that he regarded himself as Shostakovich's pupil. Yet he was no clone. Jewish motifs play a role in some of his music, and in the string quartets here, especially the String Quartet No. 12, Op. 103, Bartók is as important a model as Shostakovich. Hear the Presto movement of that symphony (track 7), with its motivic cells closely packed around a central note, interspersed with hammered repetitions of a single tone. It's an extraordinary piece, and the multinational Quatuor Danel brings the requisite taut intensity. The other two works are lighter in tone, with the String Quartet No. 17, Op. 146 (composed in 1986), diverging quite a bit from the hopeless jocularity of many... Read Less