Yuri Kalnits - Weinberg: Complete Violin Sonatas, Vol. 2 (2013)

Mieczysław Weinberg, born in Warsaw in 1919, became a close friend of Shostakovich in Moscow, after fleeing eastwards before the invading Nazis in 1939. His style has much in common with Shostakovich, as these four violin works show: fluent contrapuntal skill, a keen feeling for melody, often inflected with Jewish cantilena, and an acute sense of drama which combines a natural narrative manner with an extraordinary ability to create atmosphere, often from just a handful of notes. Since his death in 1996, his music has increasingly been recognised as some of the finest by any twentieth-century composer.

Yuri Kalnits, violin
Michael Csányi-Wills, piano