Musical Potential
Weinberg's Symphony No 4
and Violin Concerto -
heard by
HOWARD SMITH'... seductive timbre and technical mastery ...'
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As Hitler's Third Reich trampled over Europe in the late 1930s, targeted Jews fled to America or Britain. At the same time, with the Soviet invasion of Poland, budding twenty-year-old Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg escaped from the Nazi 'frying pan' to Belarus (Minsk), then to Tashkent (Uzbekistan) and eventually, by 1943, to Stalin's Soviet 'fire' at Moscow Conservatory where sixty-two-year-old Nikolai Myaskovsky was professor of composition.
All of Mieczysław's near family members, Polish Jews, died during the Nazi's occupation.
Both Myaskovsky and thirty-three-year-old Shostakovich recognized the newcomer's emerging musical potential...
Copyright © 25 March 2015
Howard Smith,
Masterton, New Zealand
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