Unlike many contemporaries, Weinberg endured incarceration during the late Stalin years due to family connections with figures implicated in Stalin's 'Doctors' plot'.
Historical Context
Weinberg composed 'Improvisation and Romance' in 1950 during Stalin's 'anti-formalist' campaigns, which demanded easily comprehensible music rooted in 'the People's' experience.
Performer Biography
The Arcadia Quartet, formed in 2006, has won multiple international chamber music competitions, including the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in 2012.
Composer Biography
Mieczysław Weinberg's String Quartet No. 3 was his first work composed after moving to Moscow from Tashkent, where he had settled after evacuating Minsk during wartime.
Composition History
Weinberg later refashioned his String Quartet No. 3 into Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op. 147, in 1987, adding a new slow movement and repositioning the original one.
Composition History
Weinberg's String Quartet No. 3 was never performed or published during his lifetime, though the manuscript contained engravers' markings suggesting publication was planned.
Recording & Production
This album is part of the Arcadia Quartet's project to record all seventeen string quartets by Mieczysław Weinberg, which began in 2020.
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