This composer’s Opus 6 Symphonic Poem premiered in Minsk on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, after which he fled to Tashkent and worked on the patriotic opera The Sword of Uzbekistan. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this Polish Soviet composer of Holocaust-inspired music like the opera The Passenger and a Twenty-First Symphony dedicated to Warsaw ghetto victims. His Moldavian Rhapsody is based on Kishinev folk music.
ANSWER: Mieczysław (“mee-yay-CHISS-waff”) Weinberg [or Moisey Vainberg, Mosze Weinberg, Moisei Samuilovich Vainberg, or Mojsze Wajnberg]
[10m] The first of Weinberg’s two pieces with this title was initially praised for adapting Jewish themes, but may have contributed to his 1953 arrest. A brass-heavy 1926 piece with this title was composed for the Sokol Festival.
ANSWER: Sinfonietta [accept Military Sinfonietta; accept Sinfonietta No. 1 in D minor or Sinfonietta No. 1, Op. 41 or Symfonietta] (The second piece is by Leoš Janáček.)
[10e] The prominent clarinets in Weinberg’s Sinfonietta were inspired by this genre of folk music created by Ashkenazi Jews.
ANSWER: klezmer
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