Violin Concerto / Symphony No. 4

The Grammy Award-winning Warsaw Philharmonic, the most significant Polish orchestra of international renown, has announced a major new recording project with Warner Classics, under the baton of Artistic Director Jacek Kaspszyk: a new album of orchestral music by Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996).

The album cements Weinberg's growing posthumous reputation as one of the most important symphonists of the 20th century (he wrote no fewer than 22 works in the genre), along with his mentor Dmitri Shostakovich, the latter counting among the younger composer's admirers.

The music of 20th Century Polish composers from Witold Lutoslawski to Henryk Górecki holds a special place in the Warsaw Philharmonic's heritage, alongside its critically acclaimed performances of the great orchestral classics. The musicians now bring their expertise in this repertoire to the music of their countryman Mieczysław Weinberg, who relocated to the Soviet Union in 1939 and escaped persecution in his homeland, but lost most of his family in the Holocaust. Only in recent years has he been hailed as the most significant Soviet composer after Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

Although Weinberg's music bears traces of the acerbic wit, melancholy and grotesquery associated with Shostakovich, his lively, neoclassical idiom remains accessible in the manner of film music. The Symphony No. 4 in A Minor (1957, rev. 1961) is rich in dance rhythms and folk melodies. The renowned Russian virtuoso Ilya Gringolts is soloist in Weinberg's dramatically charged Violin Concerto (1959).

The album marks the Warsaw Philharmonic's first collaboration with Warner Classics as an exclusive signing, becoming part of the international label's long history of collaborations with the world's greatest orchestras including the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.

The Weinberg release follows the Warsaw Philharmonic's Grammy Award win in 2012 and marks the orchestra's first recording with its new maestro and artistic director Jacek Kaspszyk, renowned for his innovative approach to programming and his championing of new music.