Weinberg: Piano Works 1951-1956

Stefan Irmer goes in search of traces and presents Weinberg's demanding piano music as an intense, immediately touching experience. Mieczyslaw Weinberg's fate is exemplary for Jewish artists of his generation: the only one of his family to escape the Holocaust, he also faced anti-Semitic hostility in the Stalinist Soviet Union. No wonder that such existential experiences are reflected in his music, which to this day has been denied the recognition it deserves.

In the Partita op. 54: the most delicate sounds are suddenly juxtaposed with brute eruptions - a reflex to the imprisonment just survived during the last wave of Stalinist purges? The ten-part work challenges player, instrument and listener alike.

Weinberg's relationship to the Soviet Union was ambivalent: on the one hand, he owed his survival during the National Socialist era to the state, but on the other, this state also held its artists on a very short leash. More than almost any other composer, Weinberg succeeded in outwardly fulfilling the socialist guidelines while developing a very individual, personal style out of tonality and avant-garde, Jewish tradition and light muse.

A fine melancholy often pervades Weinberg's music, for example in the Sonata No. 4, which was premiered in its symphonic dimensions by Emil Gilels, or in the compelling Passacaglia of the 5th Sonata.

Under Stefan Irmer's hands on MDG's magnificent Steinway concert grand "Manfred Bürki", Weinberg's music emerges grandiose and new - a long overdue rehabilitation of a great composer!

"Stefan Irmer captures the Partita's kaleidoscopic changes of mood and character most effectively. He is equally persuasive in the Fourth sonata, achieving a delicate almost Schubertian dream-like colour in its Finale." – BBC Music Magazine; Recording 5 STARS, Performance 4 STARS

• Weinberg: Partita, Op. 54
• Weinberg: Piano Sonata No. 4 in B minor, Op. 56
• Weinberg: Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 58
• Weinberg: Piano Sonatina, Op. 49

September 2023