Events Calendar

Product Description

Wednesday 4 September
1.15pm

FREE

This Lunchtime Lecture takes the format of a musical performance by an eclectic group of Sydney-based musicians, inspired by the work and lives of Mieczysław ‘Moisey’ Weinberg and Dmitri Shostakovich.

On 1 September 1939, German troops marched into Poland. So began one of the darkest periods in history. Mieczysław ‘Moisey’ Weinberg was 19 when the war broke out and he fled Warsaw for Minsk and then Tashkent

He left his family behind, never to see them again. Through his work as a composer, Weinberg met Dmitri Shostakovich and in 1943 moved to Moscow. There he composed prolifically, 17 string quartets, 21 symphonies, and much of his music imbued with his loss, and continued suffering.

Both Shostakovich and Weinberg suffered personally at the hands of the Soviet regime, but they never gave up. They allowed music to be their testimony so their stories would not be forgotten.

This performance, directed by Nicky Gluch, commemorates 80 years since the start of World War II and the centenary of the birth of Mieczysław Weinberg. The program consists of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony No. 8, dedicated to the victims of Fascism, and Weinberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2, being played for the first time in Australia.