Mieczysław Weinberg

Mieczysław Weinberg was a Soviet composer. Born as Moishe Wajnberg and also known in Soviet usage as Moisey Samuilovich Vainberg, he became one of the major symphonists of his generation, writing 26 symphonies, including 4 chamber symphonies, as well as 7 operas and works in almost all of the contemporary genres of his time. He was also active as a pianist and film composer.

He was born in Warsaw into the family of Shmuel Weinberg, a conductor and composer for the Jewish theater, and Sonia Weinberg, an actress of the Yiddish Jewish theater. His parents had moved from Kishinev to Warsaw in 1916 after a brief stay in Lodz. From the age of ten he played piano in the orchestra of the Warsaw Jewish theater Scala, led by his father, and later became musical director of several productions. In 1936 he took part with his father in the musical accompaniment for the film Fredek Makes the World Happy, and in the same year he participated in the premiere of a piano trio by Andrzej Panufnik. In 1939 he graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory as a pianist in the class of Jozef Turczynski and also performed in a trio with the Bakman brothers.

After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union. His family, who remained in Warsaw, was deported to the Lodz Ghetto and later perished in the Trawniki concentration camp. He first settled in Minsk and for some time studied composition at the Minsk Conservatory with Vasily Zolotaryov. In 1941 he was evacuated to Tashkent, where he met Dmitri Shostakovich, an encounter that had a profound influence on him. In 1943 he returned with Shostakovich to Moscow.

In February 1953 Weinberg was arrested as the son-in-law of Solomon Mikhoels and as a person who had arrived from abroad. Dmitri Shostakovich and Nikolai Peiko wrote petitions for his release, but he remained imprisoned until after Stalin's death. He was later rehabilitated. This episode became one of the most dramatic moments in his life under the Soviet regime.

As a pianist, Weinberg performed and recorded his own chamber instrumental music, including the Piano Quintet, Op. 18, in collaboration with the Borodin Quartet. From 1954 onward he also worked intensively for the cinema. He was among the first Soviet composers to use the timbres of electric musical instruments in film scores, notably in The Last Inch and The Barrier of the Unknown. His songs for the films Tiger Tamer and The Cranes Are Flying became popular, and he also wrote music for animated films including the Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons and Boniface's Holidays.

Weinberg's music was performed and recorded by conductors such as Yuri Aranovich, Rudolf Barshai, Antoni Wit, Kirill Kondrashin, Teodor Currentzis, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Gabriel Chmura, and Mark Ermler. Among the instrumentalists who championed his works were Emil Gilels, who was the first to perform Weinberg's music on stage and helped reveal him as a composer, as well as Leonid Kogan, David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniil Shafran, and Gidon Kremer.

His output was exceptionally large and included symphonies, concertos, chamber music, solo sonatas, ballets, operas, theater music, and film music. Among his operas, The Passenger later gained particular prominence; its world premiere took place in 2010 at the Bregenz Festival. In the 21st century, interest in Weinberg's music has revived, thanks in part to the efforts of performers and conductors such as Elisaveta Blumina, Gidon Kremer, Linus Roth, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Yuri Kalnits, and Marina Tarasova. Complete quartet cycles were undertaken by the Danel Quartet and the Silesian String Quartet.

Weinberg received the title Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1971, was named People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1980, and was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1990. He died in Moscow in 1996 and was buried at Domodedovo Cemetery. In later years he increasingly used the name Mieczysław, under which he became widely known in international publications.

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