This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), so if you haven't listened to any of his music yet, celebrating his birthday might very well be the excuse, or the motivation you needed to do so. Simply put, if the music of Dmitri Shostakovich makes an impression on you, you will feel the same way about Weinberg's music. A Polish composer who left his native land because of Jewish persecution and fled to the Soviet Union only to suffer the same fate through the Stalin era. He and Shostakovich became friends and what forms the parallel between their creative output is the fact that they witnessed the same atrocities and endured the same scrutiny. He was overshadowed and ignored for most of his life, and if it wasn't for the now defunct Olympia label who released a few recordings of his music under the Vainberg spelling of his name, he may never have witnessed interest in his music during his lifetime. The last fifteen years or so have seen a resurgence of interest in his output and we are now blessed with a multitude of excellent recordings of most of his chamber works and symphonies.

Whereas the sometimes bleak outlook within the music of Shostakovich seems to evoke a cold and desolate landscape, the same outlook within the music of Weinberg evokes a cold and desolate soul. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the first segment of his single-movement Symphony No. 21 "Kaddish", Op. 152 from 1991, a symphony dedicated to the memory of those murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto, which preoccupied him for over twenty years. He believed that his own parents were lost in that ghetto. The segment is scored mostly for strings, with here and there a solo violin or clarinet moving out of the shadows, but it's the final moments that will chill you to the core. Two minutes before the end a piano emerges from the orchestral textures playing, tentatively, a few measures of Chopin's Ballade No. 1 which ends abruptly. Could that have been a piece of music his mother or father played on the piano when Weinberg was a child? The enigmatic conclusion that follows returns to the shadows. The second segment of the work seems to depict a collective Jewish lament at the hands of oppressive military forces. The following Largo seems to suggest people moving in and out of shadows for fear of recognition or identification, but then ends with an emboldened klezmer tune, from which a chase ensues in the following Presto passage that abruptly fades into deep sadness. What sounds like subversive or secret communications from prison cell to prison cell against the darkness of night within a shimmer of strings acting as the backdrop to the conversation between a distant xylophone and plucked strings in the foreground, is quickly admonished by the authorities, who come down hard in the final segment to suppress any chance of upheaval. What follows is typical Soviet imagery: a disembodied soprano voice (in this case the conductor herself) singing disparate lines over a bed of strings, the return of the Chopin Ballade, whisps of what sounds like an accordion .... the voice suddenly becomes alarmed and the whole symphony ends in total darkness.

Needless to say that when you hear his Symphony No. 2, Op. 30 for String Orchestra from 1946, that the composer was in a different frame of mind. The war was over, but still, you need not go very far within the slow middle movement to realize that the brutality and barbarity of that war had left an ineradicable smudge on everyone's psyche.

This is Lithuanian conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla's first recording. An odd choice of music to launch a debut, but I believe she "gets" Weinberg, so this should quickly establish her reputation as a strong contender to lead the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and future recordings for Deutsche Grammophon going forward. She is the first female conductor to sign an exclusive long-term contract with the label. She is now the Music Director in Birmingham, a fine ensemble previously honed by conductors like Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons. The long-established Kremerata Baltica also adds distinction to this recording, an ensemble created and directed by violinist Gidon Kremer who also plays the solo violin passages on this recording. All in all an excellent release to celebrate Weinberg's birthday.

Recipient of the Gramophone 'Recording of the Year' award in 2020.