The event’s program included Mieczysław Wajnberg’s Second Violin Sonata (1944) dedicated to David Oistrakh, the String Trio of 1950, with its influences of Jewish, Roma and Moldavian themes, the Fifth Violin Sonata (1953), sometimes considered the composer’s finest work in the genre, Jewish Songs setting texts by IL Peretz (1943), the Third Sonata for violin and piano (1947), with its Jewish melodic elements and influence of Shostakovich, and the Moldavian Rhapsody (1949). Featured performers included German musicians, pianist Florian Uhlig, and violinist Linus Roth.
Born in Warsaw in 1909, Wajnberg was a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazis by fleeing into the Soviet Union. In 1943 he settled in Moscow, where he worked as a composer and pianist. In 1953, he was arrested as part of Stalin’s anti-Semitic purges but was released after Stalin’s death thanks to support from his close friend Dmitri Shostakovich. He died in Moscow in 1996, leaving a vast output of over twenty symphonies, 17 string quartets, six operas, and chamber music for various instruments and songs. He also wrote soundtracks for children’s cartoons and feature films, including The Cranes are Flying, a masterpiece of Soviet cinema that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival in 1958.
The past two decades have seen a revival of interest in Wajnberg’s music. Among those who have developed a deep interest in the composer is British director David Poutney, who has produced two of Wajnberg’s operas, The Passenger, a work on the Auschwitz theme, and The Portrait (based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol).
(mk/aj)