The life story of the Polish Jew Mieczyslaw Weinberg was strongly determined by the anti-Semitic climate in the post-war Soviet Union. The different spellings of his name - including Vainberg or Vaynberg - are the result of his wanderings and the handling of the 'Jewish question' in Russia. With the complete recording of his seventeen string quartets, the Quatuor Danel warms a wider audience to Weinberg's oeuvre, which is very similar in style to that of his friend Dimitri Shostakovich. The quartet also performs a recent composition by Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, in which she refers to Bach's musical signature. Beside these 20th century works, Beethoven's 'Große Fuge' holds up effortlessly. The turmoil in this work - and in other of his late creations - was so intense that it was only surpassed in poignant expression by names like Schoenberg or Bartók a hundred years later.
