Weinberg Memorabilia

A good friend of mine, based in Moscow, found some old programmes of Weinberg concerts in the drawers of his mother's house. He very kindly agreed to send scans to me, and I was delighted with the results.

Here are two images, from a programme of the advance previews before the premiere of Weinberg's last opera The Idiot.

Concert programmes reveal a huge amount of information, including hitherto unknown premiere dates and performances. More tantalising, however, are programmes where the composer has provided notes about their own works. Sadly, these were not to be found in the batch of programmes that my friend sent me, but it raises a question - does anyone else out there have any similar documents lurking in desk drawers? If any readers have any Weinberg-related documents, I urge you to please get in touch - and if you know of anyone who might have any old programmes, prompt them to look! Documents such as these are very rarely found in archives, and any surviving copies can prove invaluable for research.

The story doesn't end there, however. He had two copies of one of the programmes, and decided that I should have the spare one! Needless to say, I very proudly have this copy framed in my home study.