The title, Weinberg 1945, refers to the year when all the compositions recorded on this CD were created. The first performance of the piano trio took place on 9 June 1947, by Weinberg himself and two members of the Beethoven Quartet: Dmitri Tsyganov (violin) and Sergei Shrinsky (cello).

To my knowledge, there are already at least nine performances of the trio, all good to excellent. Consider Gidon Kremer (the greatest advocate of Weinberg’s music, Yulianna Avdeeva and Giedré Dirvanauskaité (DG).

Or, my absolute favourite with Dmitry Sitkovetsky, David Geringas and Jascha Nemtsov (Hänssler).

In comparison, this performance feels a bit disappointing to me. Mainly because of the pianist: Stéphanie Salmin is too dominant and the sound of the piano drowns out the strings, but this is something that could also be due to the recording.

But the cello sonata and the Rhapsody on Moldavian themes (replace ‘Moldavian’ with ‘Jewish’, which was actually the intention) make up for everything. Here, the cellist (Romain Dhainaut) and Sadie Fields (violin) are given every chance to shine, and they certainly do! And Sadie Fields completely stole my heart in the Two songs without words, which get their first ever performance here. Indeed, until recently, these two beautiful miniatures were thought to have been lost.

Piano Trio op. 24, Cello Sonata No. 1 in C, op. 21, Two songs without words for violin and piano, Rhapsody on a Moldavian theme for violin and piano op. 47 no. 3
Trio Khnopff: Sadie Fields (violin), Stéphanie Salmin (piano), Romain Dhainaut (cello)
Pavane ADW 7590