Mario Brunello

In 1785, the Parisian concert organizer Concert de la Loge Olympique commissioned Haydn to compose six symphonies, including No. 82, for its orchestra. At home, Haydn did not have at his disposal a “sound machine” of such proportions, and so new possibilities of instrumentation opened up before him. “I consider it my moral duty to write about war, about the horror that has descended upon humanity,” declared in 1919 the Warsaw-born composer Mieczysław Weinberg, one of the great unknowns of the 20th century. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he fled to Minsk, and when the Soviet Union was invaded, he ended up in Tashkent before Shostakovich arranged for him to move to Moscow. In 1948, his father-in-law, the actor Solomon Michoels, was assassinated by the Soviet secret police following antisemitic smear campaigns. That same year, Weinberg composed his Concertino for Cello, only to hide the score away in a drawer. In 1953, he himself was arrested on charges of being a “Jewish conspirator.” He was released only after Stalin’s death. In the autumn of 1850, Schumann completed his Cello Concerto, which he called a “Concertstück.” Until 1860, however, no one wished to perform this highly demanding concerto. Today it belongs to the standard repertoire and is among cellists’ favorite works.