Mieczysław Weinberg, born in Warsaw in 1919, became a close friend of Shostakovich in Moscow, after fleeing eastwards before the invading Nazis in 1939. His style has much in common with Shostakovich’s: fluent contrapuntal skill, a keen feeling for melody, often inflected with Jewish cantilena, and an acute sense of drama.

Since his death in 1996, his vast output – which includes 26 symphonies, 7 operas and 17 string quartets – has enjoyed increasing recognition as some of the most individual and compelling music of the twentieth century. This recording pairs an early orchestral work, the suite Polish Tunes of 1947, with the last symphony he was to complete, dedicated to the memory of those who died in the Warsaw Ghetto, both in their first recordings.

The soprano Veronika Bartenyeva is a rising star in Russia, having won a number of competitions; she first sang on radio at the age of six. Dmitry Vasiliev was born in 1972 in the city of Bolshoi Kamen in Primorsky Kraj in the Russian Far East. He graduated from the Rostov State Conservatoire and then took a post-graduate course and probation period at the Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatoire. He has since been active all over Russia. In 1997 he set up the Tambov Symphony Orchestra in Tambov, south of Moscow, which he led as artistic director and chief conductor until 2005. Since then he has been principal conductor of the Siberian Symphony Orchestra in Omsk. This is the third recording that he and the orchestra have made for Toccata Classics, following CDs of Shebalin (TOCC0136) and Spratley (TOCC0194).