To mark the occasion, the Warsaw-based Wajnberg Institute has launched Uniwersum Wajnberga, an innovative digital platform that brings together information and commentary on the composer’s life and musical oeuvre, along with a wide range of multimedia resources related to the cultural context of his career.
The platform offers music lovers a comprehensive account of Wajnberg’s life and times, using photographs, archival materials and documents, and guiding users on a journey through the places that shaped his personality—from Warsaw, through Minsk and Tashkent, to Moscow.
The anniversary of Wajnberg’s death is also being commemorated by the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, which will stage his opera The Passenger next month.
Premiered in 2010 and directed by David Pountney, the opera will be performed on March 8, 10 and 12.
Composed in 1968 to a libretto by Alexander Medvedev, based on a short story by Polish writer and former German concentration camp prisoner Zofia Posmysz, The Passenger is set on an ocean liner en route from Europe to South America in the late 1950s and in the Auschwitz camp in 1943 and 1944.
The two main protagonists are Liese, the wife of a German diplomat who had served as an SS guard at Auschwitz, and a fellow passenger who is the spitting image of Marta, a Polish prisoner at the camp.
The encounter forces Liese to confront the truth about her past.
Born in Warsaw in 1909, Wajnberg was a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to the Soviet Union.
Mieczysław Wajnberg. Image: Polskie Radio
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 in part to support from his close friend Dmitri Shostakovich.
He died in Moscow on February 26, 1996, leaving behind a vast body of work that includes more than 20 symphonies, 17 string quartets, six operas, chamber music for various instruments and numerous 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 1958 Cannes Film Festival.
The past few decades have seen a revival of interest in Wajnberg's musical legacy.
(mk/gs)