Martin Anderson, Fanfare USA - Recording Reviews:
"Moishei Vainberg, aka Mieczyslaw Weinberg, 1919-96, has suffered for far too long from being considered (where he is considered at all) as being a
Shostakovich epigone. But Shostakovich was not of that opinion. His professional and personal respect for Vainberg ran very deep, and practical; the superficial
similarities of style fall away once you get to know Weinberg's [Vainberg's] music, and a fully formed, wholly individual composer emerges, one of the most
compelling voices of the 20th century."
Steve Schwartz, Classical Net Reviews:
"Weinberg is the third great Soviet composer, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich."
Per Skans (Sweden) on composer's name:
"Why Weinberg? Why not Vainberg? Why not Wainberg?"
The reason is very simple: Weinberg is correct, all other spellings are wrong!
Weinberg grew up and spent his first twenty years in Poland, where the Latin alphabet is used, and he and his family spelt the name exactly this way. Its origin is
German/Yiddish. Any other spelling in the Latin alphabet must thus be avoided! I confess having certain guilt myself, since I once accepted - without checking them
- some rumours that Weinberg himself preferred the spelling "Vainberg".
I discovered my error after I had written the texts for half a dozen CDs in the large series of Olympia in London, and I wanted to change the spelling, but they
refused. In fact I understand this, because it would have confused their customers if they had changed it in the middle of a series. Nevertheless the CDs have
unfortunately contributed to the present Babylonic situation. The variety of (wrong) spellings is due to the circumstance that various people believed that the
original spelling of the name was the one of the Russian alphabet. They then transliterated the name into the Latin alphabet, according to various rules (an ironical
detail being that Soviet scores -- of all! -- used the correct spelling Weinberg!).
But now Weinberg is becoming increasingly accepted. The New Groves, the famous dictionary, used the English transliteration "Vaynberg" some years ago, but
in the Internet edition they have now corrected this into Weinberg. I am at present writing a biography in English, which is scheduled to appear in 2005 at Toccata
Press in London; there I of course am using the correct spelling Weinberg!