MIECZYSLAW WEINBERG (1919-1996): Complete Songs, Vol. 1 - Children's Songs, Op. 13 (Olga Kalugina [soprano]), Beyond the Border of Past Days, Op. 50 (Svetlana Nikolayeva [mezzo]), Rocking the Child, Op. 130 (Kalugina).

Description: Weinberg was much more active than Shostakovich in song-writing (around 200 of them) and many of them are overtly Jewish in both texts and musical styles, including the Children's Songs of 1943. Children are a major thematic element of this repertoire also, as in the 1973 Rocking the Child, which is a set of eleven lullabies. Beyond the Border (to Blok texts saturated with the imagery of half-light, distance and transcendence) dates from 1951, when Weinberg, along with many other composers, was in the post-1948 purgatory of Zhdanov's witch-hunt of "formalist" artists. Russian (Cyrillic)-English texts. Dmitri Korostelyov (piano).