Review: Mirga's first major recording is a magical debut

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla's first major recording contains two symphonies by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, aka Moisey Samuilovich Vaynberg, as the Polish-born Jewish composer was called in Russia. How's that for a mouthful of names?

These are somber and at times excruciatingly slow symphonies that teeter on the edge of existence. No. 2 is music for the aftermath of World War II, during which most of Weinberg's family died in the camps. (Weinberg himself immigrated to Russia in 1939 to escape the Nazi occupation.) No. 21, written in 1991, is Weinberg's Opus 152, the second- to-last piece by a composer who died five years later at age 76. It