Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919–96), the Polish-born composer who spent most of his life in the Soviet Union, was a close friend of Shostakovich, with whose musical language his own has much in common. Weinberg’s vast output includes 26 symphonies, seventeen string quartets and some 200 songs. The three song-cycles recorded here date from across Weinberg’s career. They demonstrate his extraordinary ability to create atmosphere, often from just a handful of notes, and encompass a wide range of emotion, from wartime suffering, through playfulness and protest, to maternal love.

Weinberg was born in Warsaw on 8 December 1919; his early musical experiences were as pianist and ensemble leader at a Jewish theatre where his father was composer and violinist.

From the age of twelve he took piano lessons with Jozef Turczinski at the Warsaw Conservatory; the outbreak of war thwarted his plans to study in the USA.

In 1939 Weinberg fled the Nazi occupation (in which his parents and sister Ester were murdered), in the first instance to Belorussia, then Minsk, where he attended the composition classes of Vasily Zolotaryov, a former student of Rimsky-Korsakov; with the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941, he moved on to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

At the invitation of Shostakovich, who had been impressed with the score of Weinberg’s First Symphony, he moved to Moscow, where he lived from 1943 until his death on 26 February 1996.

Like Shostakovich’s, Weinberg’s literary interests were wide-ranging, and he set poetry not only of Russian/Soviet and Polish but also of Hungarian, Spanish and Japanese origin, as well as by Schiller and Shakespeare. His favourite topics of childlike innocence and its violation, of night, nature and consolation, are well represented on this disc.

This first CD in the complete of Weinberg’s songs includes a booklet containing comprehensive notes and translations of all of the songs included.

It forms part of a widespread examination of Weinberg’s music on CD, with orchestral music appearing from Chandos and the string quartets from CPO.