Mieczysław Weinberg

Mieczysław Weinberg (December 8, 1919 – February 26, 1996) was a Polish, Soviet, and Russian composer and pianist. Born in Warsaw to parents who worked in the Yiddish theatre in Poland, his early years were surrounded by music. He taught himself to play the piano at a young age and eventually became skilled enough to substitute for his father as a conductor at Warsaw's Jewish Theatre. During this period, he began to compose. At the age of 12, he started formal music lessons and soon thereafter enrolled at the Warsaw Conservatory. He studied piano with Józef Turczyński, who considered him and Witold Małcużyński as one of his best students. In 1938, Weinberg played for Josef Hofmann, who offered to teach him at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Weinberg declined, because he preferred to focus on composition instead; the invasion of Poland that initiated World War II in 1939 also made it impossible for him to accept. As the Wehrmacht advanced on Warsaw, Weinberg left his parents behind and fled with his sister towards the Soviet border. Discomfort forced his sister to turn back in mid-journey—he never saw her or the rest of his family again. During his only subsequent visit to Poland in 1966, he learned that his family had been murdered at the Trawniki concentration camp. Weinberg took refuge in the Soviet Union, where he officially adopted a Russified version of his name. He settled first in Minsk, where he studied composition with Vasily Zolotarev, then in Tashkent. It was in that city that Weinberg met and married Natalya Mikhoels, the daughter of the actor Solomon Mikhoels. From there, Weinberg sent a copy of his Symphony No. 1 to Dmitri Shostakovich through an intermediary, which resulted in an official invitation from the Committee on the Arts to come to Moscow. Upon arriving in the capital, Weinberg successfully established himself as a composer. Changes in Soviet cultural policy in the postwar led to increased repression against minority groups, including Jews. This led to the murder of Weinberg's father-in-law on the orders of Stalin in 1948. Although Weinberg's music was praised by critics and colleagues—including Tikhon Khrennikov, general secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers—and continued to be played, he was surveilled and harassed by the MVD. On February 6, 1953, Weinberg was arrested; he was jailed at Lubyanka Prison. Intercession on his behalf by Shostakovich to Lavrenty Beria and Stalin's death led to Weinberg's release on April 25. For the next few years, he focused his efforts on music for film and stage. By the end of the 1950s, he turned his attention again to concert music. He experienced his greatest professional success in the 1960s, when his music was played by musicians such as Rudolf Barshai, the Borodin Quartet, Timofei Dokschitzer, Mikhail Fichtenholz, Leonid Kogan, Kirill Kondrashin, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. His score for Fyodor Khitruk's cartoon Winnie-the-Pooh was an immediate success; the verses sung by its titular character entered the Russian popular lexicon. Weinberg later said that its music had contributed the most to the preservation of his legacy. In the mid-1960s, Weinberg began an extramarital affair with Olga Rakhalskaya, daughter of the psychiatrist Yuliy Rakhalsky, that quickly developed into a romantic relationship; they married in 1972. Starting in this period, his personal life stabilized and was dominated mostly by work. His concert music was played with less frequency as many of its former exponents had left the Soviet Union, severed their friendships with Weinberg, or died. He acquired a few new advocates, including Maxim Shostakovich and Vladimir Fedoseyev. Despite being awarded the People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1980, shifts in musical tastes and chronic health problems led to the neglect of Weinberg's music. He continued to compose prolifically through the 1980s, but Crohn's disease and the collapse of the Soviet Union had immediate adverse consequences for him and his output. The loss of state patronage and healthcare prevented him from receiving treatment for his broken hip in late 1992, which left him homebound, and eventually bedridden. Belated recognition of his music outside of Russia began in the 1990s through the advocacy of Tommy Persson, a Swedish judge. In 1994, Poland awarded Weinberg the Meritorious Activist of Culture. After consultations with his wife in late 1995, he converted to Orthodox Christianity a few weeks before his death on February 26, 1996.

Gidon Kremer plays Pärt/Weinberg - 2025-11-22T00:00:00.000000Z

Calm Classics - Soundscape of Serenity - 2025-09-22T00:00:00.000000Z

Polish Classical Masterpieces - 2025-08-03T00:00:00.000000Z

Weinberg: Complete Music for Cello & Orchestra - 2025-05-23T00:00:00.000000Z

Weinberg: Songs - 2025-04-25T00:00:00.000000Z

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