Two people – that’s all it takes to carry on an interesting and inspiring conversation. Two instruments constitute also the smallest possible ensemble – the dialogue.

Alfred Schnittke – author of three operas, ten symphonies as well as numerous concert and chamber works – had a complex and confusing identity.

Baroque music, early 20th-century compositions, and… negro spirituals. What brings these elements of a varied and apparently incoherent repertoire together into an attractive whole is the extraordinary figure of Roman Maciejewski.

For every musician and music lover, discovering a new work is a great joy and satisfaction.

“The String Quartet that Weinberg completed in May 1937 bears no resemblance to the music that young Warsaw composers were fascinated with at that time."

The programme of this album has several threads that allow you to listen to it in many ways.

West Side Sinfonietta: the ensemble is a joint initiative of the musicians of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.

Every composer whose piece appears on this CD was an essential figure in the very best of the late eighteenth- and the early nineteenth-century salon culture.

The composer had written his first string quartet in 1937, while still in Warsaw. After his escape to the Soviet Union in September 1939, he composed more of them, sometimes in ‘series’.