Arcadia Quartet - Quartet Integral of Mieczysław Weinberg. Volume 3 - Music box, 15^th of May 2023

On the 31^st of March, the British label Chandos released the third volume in the series of the Quartet Integral of M. Weinberg, performed by the Romanian Arcadia Quartet, made up of four Romanian musicians working with the Transylvania Philharmonic of Cluj-Napoca: violinists Ana Torok and Răsvan Dumitru, violist Traian Boală and cellist Szolt Torok.

In 2021 and 2022 the first two volumes of this series were released, covering Quartets numbers 2,5,8, 1,7,11. Now on the third volume, Quartets numbers 4 and 16.

Weinberg, a composer who lived between 1919 and 1996, was born in Warsaw; with the outbreak of the Second World War, he took refuge in the Soviet Union, arriving first in Minsk, then in Tashkent and Moscow - he moved to Moscow in 1944 at the insistence of Shostakovich, who was a friend of his and who had a very great influenceon him, including in terms of compositional style,

Quartet No. 4 was written by Weinberg in March 1945 and embodies the experience of war, of his own stylistic quests - original and challenging music of undoubted value.

We listen to this opus in the version of the admirable Arcadia Quartet, which finds just the right tone and cohesion to illuminate all the details of the score.