Sym 21 Kaddish & Polish Tunes

Mieczysaw Weinberg, born in Warsaw in 1919, became a close friend of Shostakovich in Moscow, after fleeing eastwards before the invading Nazis in 1939. His style has much in common with Shostakovichs: fluent contrapuntal skill, a keen feeling for melody, often inflected with Jewish cantilena, and an acute sense of drama. Since his death in 1996, his vast output which includes 26 symphonies, seven operas and seventeen string quartets has enjoyed increasing recognition as some of the most individual and compelling music of the twentieth century. This recording pairs an early orchestral work, the suite Polish Tunes of 1947, with the last symphony he was to complete, dedicated to the memory of those who died in the Warsaw Ghetto, both in their first recordings.