The Grammy Award-winning Warsaw Philharmonic, the most significant Polish orchestra of international renown, releases a major new recording project with Warner Classics, under the baton of innovative Artistic Director Jacek Kaspszyk: a new album of orchestral music by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996).

The album cements Weinberg's growing posthumous reputation as one of the most important symphonists of the 20th century (he wrote no fewer than 22 works in the genre), along with his mentor Dmitri Shostakovich, the latter counting among the younger composer's admirers.

Although Weinberg's music bears traces of the acerbic wit, melancholy and grotesquery associated with Shostakovich, his lively, neoclassical idiom remains accessible in the manner of film music. The Symphony No. 4 in A Minor (1957, rev. 1961) is rich in dance rhythms and folk melodies. The renowned Russian virtuoso Ilya Gringolts is soloist in Weinberg's dramatically charged Violin Concerto (1959).

The album marks the Warsaw Philharmonic's first collaboration with Warner Classics as an exclusive signing, becoming part of the international label's long history of collaborations with the world's greatest orchestras including the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.