The overdue revival of interest in Mieczysław Weinberg has focused on his chamber and orchestral music, with periodic revivals of pivotal operas such as The Passenger. As this new recording illustrates, song was no less significant as a facet of his creative personality, beginning with the cycle of Akazie (Acacias), which the 21-year-old Weinberg composed in 1940, having lately fled Warsaw and briefly settled in Minsk.


By this point, Weinberg was living in Moscow, and when he wrote the Three Romances, op.22, he chose to set texts by Poland’s greatest Romantic poet, Adam Mieckiewicz. Thus the songs radiate nostalgia for a lost homeland. In later cycles he also returned to his native Polish language, and to the work of his own favourite poet, Julian Tuwim. Like Akazie, the Stare Listy (Old Letters), op.77, set Tuwim’s poems with a moving simplicity. Despite the often painful mood and subject matter, Weinberg writes with great sympathy for the singer, in melodic lines which naturally inflect the poetic text.

This unique collection of Weinberg’s song output features two Polish musicians who have made international careers. Soprano Joanna Klisowska has made recordings of Baroque and Classical-era repertoire with many of Europe’s premier early music ensembles; she is also committed to reviving the neglected artsong output of her own country, and this album should serve to put Weinberg back on the musical map as a songwriter who never forgot his Polish roots.