The Portrait - Undiscovered genius, who is Mieczysław Weinberg?

This February sees the UK premiere of Opera North's production of Mieczysław Weinberg's The Portrait. Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), lived through some of the most dramatic moments of the 20th Century as a Polish Jew. Despite a life marked by great struggles and disappointments, he composed an extraordinary body of symphonies, sonatas, songs and operas, and became a close friend of the much admired composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Weinberg's biographer David Fanning, musicologist Michelle Assay and opera director David Pountney discuss the composer in the context of Jewish artists and the Soviet Union, World War II and Shostakovich. All the chamber music in this video was composed by Weinberg, and is performed by David Greed and Anthony Kraus.