Weinberg 100

2019 is the centenary of Weinberg's birth. This page serves as a compendium of every event, publication, and broadcast that I'm aware of taking place to celebrate Weinberg's centenary during (and around) 2019. 

Events 

November 2018, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, led by their conductor Mirga Grażinytė-Tyla, are presenting a weekend of Weinberg events and concerts to kickstart the centenary celebrations early. Concerts include Gidon Kremer performing his transcription of Weinberg's 24 Preludes for Cello, the Kremerata Baltica ensemble performing Weinberg's Concertino for Violin and Strings, and the UK premiere of Weinberg's 21st Symphony. The weekend also features a lecture given by Weinberg experts Michelle Assay and David Fanning. More info available here. 

Further Weinberg concerts in Birmingham in 2019 include Gidon Kremer in Weinberg's Violin Concerto, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja as soloist in the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. 

24-27 January 2019, Manchester, United Kingdom

Conference: 'Mieczysław Weinberg: Between East and West', and Weinberg Quartet Cycle

Having given the first ever complete Weinberg cycle in 2009, the Quatuor Danel are presenting all Seventeen Quartets across seven concerts over four days, built alongside an academic conference on Weinberg's life and work. The call for papers is still open. I reproduce the information below: 

*Mieczysław Weinberg: Between East and West* *University of Manchester, Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, 24-27 January 2017* *Call for Papers*

*Deadline: midnight (GMT), Sunday 14 October 2018*

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic rediscovery of the music of Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996), the Polish-born composer who twice escaped from Nazi invasions and finally settled in Moscow. His substantial output includes some of the most powerful Holocaust-commemorative music ever written, notably his Auschwitz-based opera, *The Passenger*, dubbed a ‘masterpiece’ by Shostakovich.

The four-day conference at the University of Manchester marks the beginning of Weinberg’s centenary year. It brings together scholars and practitioners from East and West, with the composer’s first daughter, Victoria Bishops, as Guest of Honour. The conference is co-sponsored by the British Academy and dovetails with a cycle of his seventeen string quartets, to be performed at intervals throughout the event by the Quatuor Danel, artists-in-residence at the University.

Proposals are invited for papers (20 minutes) re-considering any aspect of
Weinberg’s life and work. Topics may include, but will not be restricted to:

  - Weinberg’s multiple identities (Polish/Jewish/Soviet Russian/humanist)
  - his reputation in his lifetime and afterwards, both in Russia and the
  West
  - personal and musical relationships with other composers and cultural
  figures
  - intersections between music, theatre and film
  - recent developments in biographical, archival and analytical study.

Proposals are invited from specialists and non-specialists alike, and should include a short abstract (c. 250 words) and biography (c. 100 words). They will be considered by the co-convenors, Professor David Fanning (University of Manchester) and Dr Michelle Assay (Université de Paris Sorbonne).  Please send by midnight (GMT) on 14 October 2018 to:
david.fanning@manchester.ac.uk and michelleassay@gmail.com. The full conference programme will be announced by 1 November.

Delegates will be charged a modest registration fee, to be confirmed, which
will include tickets for all five Quatuor Danel concerts, as well as
associated workshop and concert performances.

Further information on the Quatuor Danel's concert series can be found here

October 2019 - Spring 2021, London, United Kingdom

Concert series (with talks and lectures): Weinberg Chamber Music

I will update with details as they are announced publicly, but be prepared for an enormous Weinberg centenary project beginning in London, running over two seasons at a prestigious London venue. 

Concerts

The Quatuor Danel will be taking their Weinberg Cycle on a 'world tour', with further performances planned:

2-4-2019 / 2-8-2019: Paris Philharmonie (Paris, FR) (see here)
4-28-2019, 5-5-2019, 5-12-2019: Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C. US) (see here)

At least four stagings of The Passenger are planned:

Four stagings of The Passenger are on the books across Europe in 2018-19:
August 2018: Den Jyske Opera (Denmark, NL)
May 2019: Theater und Philharmonie Thüringen (Gera, DE)
April-June 2019: Staatstheatre Braunschweig
April-June 2019: The Israeli Opera (Tel Aviv)

February 1st and 2nd will see the German premiere of Weinberg's 22nd Symphony in Berlin (details)

April 24 and 25 will see the Japanese premiere of Weinberg's 12th Symphony in Tokyo (see here)

Publications

I am currently aware of no fewer than three books planned for release to coincide with the Weinberg centenary. Details are, at present, vague, but I will update this page as and when more information is made available. 

- Per Skans, Michelle Assay, and David Fanning 

The long-awaited life-and-works study of Mieczysław Weinberg is due for release in 2019. This volume, begun by the late Per Skans and completed by scholars Michelle Assay and David Fanning, provides a comprehensive and in-depth examination of Weinberg's life and music. 

- Inessa Dvuzhil'naya

Known to Weinberg enthusiasts for her excellent work on Weinberg's time in Minsk, Dzuzhil'naya has announced the publication her upcoming book 'Mieczysław Weinberg and Belarus', to be released in January 2019 (in Russian). 

- 'Music in a Cold Climate: Mieczysław Weinberg and Polish Music' (provisional title)

Finally, there's my book which is all on track to be released in 2019, with a provisional date of October. I will of course update with details of publisher, price, etc. 

Weinberg's birthdate itself

As Danuta Gwizdalanka has shown previously, the actual date of Weinberg's birth can be brought into question. It's either 17th January, or 8th December. Weinberg and his family celebrated his birthday on the 8th December throughout his life, and a reissued birth certificate acquired after great effort in 1982 also bears this date. However, Gwizdalanka found two documents that contradict this, after research in the archives of the Warsaw Conservatoire. She found a duplicate of Weinberg's birth certificate along with his conservatoire application, both of which give his birth date as 17 January 1919. This obviously presents a problem to biographers. Perhaps the easiest 'solution' is that Weinberg lied about his age in 1931 in order to appear old enough to actually enrol on his course (otherwise, he was too young). If not, then some serious revision is due in the textbooks. 

PeerMusic have also launched a comprehensive website for Weinberg's centenary, available here. I have reproduced some of their information on concerts above. 

If you have a broadcast/event/publication/recording for Weinberg's centenary in 2019 that you would like included on this page, please contact me at daniel.elphick@rhul.ac.uk or post a comment below.