LDV81

TRIO METRAL 21 Why did you choose to couple the Weinberg Trio with the two by Shostakovich? Justine — Quite aside from our natural liking for these works, there are historical reasons for bringing them together. Dmitri Shostakovich and MieczysławWeinberg enjoyed a close friendship. They both had very similar experiences a few years apart, and both of them wrote music for the cinema. Weinberg regarded Shostakovich as his mentor, even though he was never officially taught by him. It’s reported that they enjoyed exchanging their scores and found a source of inspiration in each other. We also know that Shostakovich greatly helped and supported Weinberg when he moved to the USSR, having fled the German invasion of Poland. In particular, he called for the younger man’s release when he had been unjustly imprisoned for ‘Zionist activities’ in 1953. What’s more, Shostakovich wrote his Second Trio (1944) after becoming aware of the situation of the Jews in Europe and the USSR. Weinberg composed his own Trio a year later. One can perceive a strong causal link between these two works, which extends to the appearance of quotations from Shostakovich’s work in Weinberg’s Trio. There are also Jewish themes in both works, some of which appear to be related. Although one often hears it said that ‘Weinberg is rehashed Shostakovich’, in reality they are two very different composers, with distinct modes of expression.