Mieczysław Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 10 (1 CD)

Firma Melodiya presents a collection of selected symphonies by Moisey Weinberg. Weinberg’s works remained in the shadow of his great contemporary Dmitri Shostakovich for a long time. In the meantime, Shostakovich himself highly appreciated the composing talent of his younger colleague. However, Weinberg’s vivid composing individuality, which combined elements of Jewish, Polish and Russian national cultures, allows us to speak about him as one of the most significant phenomena of domestic music of the second half of the 20th century. This collection features Symphonies Nos 5 and 10 composed during the period of the composer’s most intensive creative activity in 1960s. A Fifth Symphony is philosophical and deep with wealth of slow tempos. The Tenth Symphony became one of the composer’s creative peaks. Old genres and forms are organically combined here with music techniques of the 20th century. The outstanding Soviet conductors Kirill Kondrashin and Rudolf Barshai played a significant part in popularizing Weinberg’s works. Many of Weinberg’s composition were performed for the first time by the orchestras founded by the two conductors – the Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic Society and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. The Fifth Symphony was recorded by Kondrashin in 1975, and the Tenth one by Barshai in 1970.