From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
In Dmitri Shostakovich’s last years, Mieczyslaw Weinberg stopped writing symphonies. After his 11th in 1970, nothing more stirred in him until, in December 1975, four months after his friend’s passing, he began a memorial symphony.
The 12th did not go well. The influential conductor Kirill Kondrashin rejected the overlong opening movement and the hourlong score did not get a hearing until Maxim Shostakovich, son of the dedicatee, conducted a Soviet radio broadcast in October 1979. Soon after, Maxim fled to the West and the symphony was left to gather dust.
Read on here.
En francais ici.