Mieczysław Weinberg is said to be the most frequently performed Polish composer in the world in recent years. Even if detailed statistics are not readily available, there is no doubt that the popularity of his works among performers is enormous and continues to grow all the time. A decade ago, Weinberg’s music was still being dismissed as epigonic and imitative of Shostakovich’s aesthetics. Only recently has it begun to reveal its range and depth and emanate its full radiance. Unfavourable opinions can be put down to the ignorance of Weinberg’s prodigious output. Successful recordings have been made of his quartets, which are performed by one of the best ensembles of contemporary times – the Silesian String Quartet. His last piece in this genre, String Quartet No. 17, Op. 146, written in 1987, was included on the Silesians’ recently released fifth album in the Weinberg series. Weinberg outlined the opening motifs of the Quartet with a light, seemingly carefree gesture, probably to “anaesthetise” the listener before administering truly serious material in the central Andantino. The drama of the musical events follows the structure of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58, which we know to be “lark-like” only at the beginning. The middle movement of the work is a rhetorical discourse on the power of expression that is scarcely matched by other works.
The piano part in Beethoven’s Concerto in G Major, which the audience will hear in the version with a chamber accompaniment of a string quintet, will be performed by the outstanding pianist Piotr Sałajczyk. He has collaborated with the Silesian String Quartet for years (the musicians have also recorded Weinberg’s works together), and their joint creative ventures are among the finest in the field of chamber music. We can start counting down the days to the concert – after all, the highlight will be a work that is as outstanding as it is rare as a spectacle: Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Suite, Op. 23. It was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein in 1930 and was penned for an unusual line-up – piano for the left hand (Wittgenstein was a victim of the First World War), two violins and cello. The musical substance of this work, one of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s most ambitious artistic endeavours, is also extraordinary.