The Quatuor Danel performs Shostakovich and Weinberg — With Elisabeth Leonskaja

The Quatuor Danel's recordings of Mieczysław Weinberg's chamber works are a modern benchmark, and grande dame Elisabeth Leonskaja, heir to the legendary Russian school of piano, performed for Dmitri Shostakovich himself. These extraordinary artists come together here in an extraordinary program dedicated to both composers, filmed at the Opéra National du Capitole in Toulouse.

From their celebrated Weinberg repertoire, the French ensemble performs the String Quartet No. 2, a youthful work that already shows evidence of the composer's ingenious compositional voice, and No. 6, marked by the cataclysmic violence of World War II. Weinberg's turbulent style is often compared with that of his compatriot and mentor Shostakovich, whose works open and close the concert. First, Leonskaja gives an energetic and finely balanced reading of the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor, written in 1943 and dedicated to the composer's recently deceased teacher Leonid Nikolayev. The Piano Quintet in G minor, which brings all five musicians together for a grand finale, marked Shostakovich's return to his favored instrument thanks to a collaboration with the Beethoven Quartet, which won him the Stalin Prize in 1940.