Weinberg: String Quartet No.6

For me, the string quartets of Weinberg are essential listening. They bear comparison, I think, with those of Shostakovich, even if they suffer somewhat in the comparison. They are made of intensely interesting and thoughtful music.

Here is the slow movement from the String Quartet No.6, a six-movement work written in 1946. The sinewy lines, which are hard to predict but not capriciously so, embedded in a fairly rigorous imitative structure, offer a good example of what I find so valuable about Weinberg as a composer. Background and analysis here.