The affinities between the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and his good friend Dmitri Shostakovich are as obvious as the Beethoven/Brahms connection, which caused the latter to say "Any fool can see that". Those affinities permeate the early works here, Weinberg's sole String Trio, the Sonatina for violin and piano, and the Concertino for violin and strings, all written shortly after the second World War. The later pieces – the Symphony No 10 of 1968 and the Sonata No 3 for solo violin of 1979 – are of a different cut, more adventurous and often sonically harsher. The gripping solo sonata is a real discovery, and Gidon Kremer regards it as worth a 20th-century place alongside Bartók's towering solo sonata. He certainly handles the work with that level of conviction. url.ie/kh67