Weinberg: String Quartets, Volume 1 – Arcadia Quartet

January 11, 2021, 9:00 am

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The seventeen string quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg span nearly half a century, from his student days in Warsaw to the end of his career in Moscow, and show his development as a composer more clearly than his work in any other genre. The Second Quartet, composed in 1939, was dedicated to his mother and sister, who he would later learn had not survived the German invasion of Poland. Quartet No. 5 reflects the influence of Shostakovich over the young composer. The final quartet in this program – No. 8 – was written in 1959 and dedicated to the Borodin Quartet. The Arcadia Quartet is a passionate advocate for these works, writing: “With every recording and every live performance of his music, we intend to shine some light on this wide-ranging, profound phenomenon, which has remained overlooked for so long, and we hope that, with time, Mieczysław Weinberg will take his rightful place in the history of music.”