Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996)
Episode 3 of 5: An Inspector Calls
First broadcast: Wednesday 04 June 2014

Over the past seven [bad word] of the Week has delved into just about every [bad word] in classical music, and plenty of less well-known ones too. As the programme reached its 70th birthday last year, Donald Macleod challenged listeners [bad word] up with the name of a [bad word] who had never previously been featured. Suggestions flooded in, over four-and-a-half-thousand of them, and of these, more than 20 made the case for an obscure [bad word] of Polish-Jewish origin, Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Weinberg's music is well represented on CD, and as Donald heard more and more of it, his astonishment that he [bad word] across it before [bad word]  So all this week, Donald Macleod explores the life and work of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, in [bad word] of writer, broadcaster and champion of unjustly [bad word]  Martin Anderson.

Today, a late-night knock at the door heralds an [bad word] visit from the KGB - the pretext, an allegation that Weinberg was part of a conspiracy to establish a Jewish republic in the Crimea. He was incarcerated "in a solitary cell, where I could only sit, not lie down". But for the death of Stalin a month later, our story might well end here; Weinberg could easily have gone the way of his father-in-law Solomon Mikhoels, whose state-sponsored murder five years earlier had been officially passed off as a car crash. In the event, after a further six weeks in jail Weinberg was released, doubtless in no small part due to the intervention of Shostakovich, who had put his own neck on the line to vouch for his friend. Weinberg's imprisonment seems to have put a considerable dent in his productivity. It took him several years to return to both the symphony and the string quartet, but when he did, the results were remarkable.

00:04
Mieczysław Weinberg
Symphony no. 4 in minor Op.61
Performer: National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
CHANDOS: CHAN 10237, CHANDOS, 2

Mieczysław Weinberg
String Quartet No 8, Op 66
Performer: Borodin Quartet. Performer: Rostislav Dubinsky. Performer: Yaroslav Alexandrov. Performer: Dmitri Shebalin. Performer: Valentin Berlinsky.
MELODIYA, MEL CD 10 01998, 6

00:30
Mieczysław Weinberg
Concerto in minor Op.67 for violin and orchestra
Performer: Linus Roth. Performer: Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Performer: Mihkel Kütson.
CHALLENGE CC72627, CHALLENGE, 4

00:40
Mieczysław Weinberg
Symphony no. 5 Op.76
Orchestra: Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Kirill Kondrashin. [bad word] DISC: RD CD 11 [bad word] DISC, 3

 [bad word] /www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045bzhz
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