Mieczysław Weinberg's parents and sister died in a concentration camp, his Yiddish-language actor father-in-law was killed on Stalin's orders and the Polish-born composer himself was imprisoned by the KGB and only released after Stalin's death.
His moving Holocaust opera The Passenger, which revolves around a former camp guard who recognizes a former inmate on an ocean liner decades later, was not performed until four years after his death in 1996.
Even a close friendship with Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich seems to have worked against him, prompting critics to look at him as a lesser version of the Russian master.
"If you read about his life and his biography, the impression that comes to mind is 'How much can one person actually take?,'" German violinist Linus Roth asked in an interview with Reuters.
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