In 1948 Weinberg shared the fate of his fellow composers in the Soviet Union, being castigated for supposed aesthetic sins and told in no uncertain terms to mend his ways. He had even more cause to reflect, given that his father-in-law, the famous Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels, was murdered on Stalin’s instructions at the beginning of the year, heralding the notorious anti-cosmopolitan (read anti-Semitic) campaign. In the aftermath of this dual catastrophe, Weinberg composed much compulsory hackwork. But he also managed to produce gems that negotiate the hazardous path between acceptability and integrity. Three such works are here performed with marvellous understanding and polish by the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich under their founder, Daniel Grossmann.

The Cello Concertino – better known in its later expanded revision as a Concerto – is beautifully done. Wen-Sinn Yang plays with obvious love for the score and conviction in its importance, with sustained lines poised between melancholic inwardness and passionate declamation. Unsurprisingly, the Jewish intonations underpinning all four movements are here brought to the surface and cherished (but thankfully never pushed into caricature).

Similarly, Tassilo Probst inflects the long lyrical lines of the Violin Concertino with precisely the blend of wistfulness and indomitable tension that makes Weinberg’s voice so special and so treasurable. Accompanying textures are also imaginatively and idiomatically coloured. Heard with an innocent ear this would already be deeply moving and impressive. Factor in the context and the result is practically heartbreaking. The same goes for the Moldavian Rhapsody, here in the least well-known of its three incarnations, which makes a terrific complement to Oistrakh’s superb and now widely available recording of the violin-and-piano version. The piece is in danger of becoming a hackneyed calling card but here it blazes with inner conviction and emotional authenticity.

An obvious completion to the disc would have been the Sinfonietta No 1 of 1949, which is likewise saturated with Jewish intonations. But I’m not complaining at what is, I think, the sixth recording of the Seventh Symphony. This is an altogether harder piece to ‘read’, partly because Weinberg’s musical language had toughened up significantly in the intervening 15 years or so (its composition overlaps with the first conceptual stages of the Auschwitz opera The Passenger, with which it shares a tone of denunciatory harshness). Grossmann and his players get unerringly to the emotional heart of the matter, in a way I don’t recall hearing since Barshai’s pioneering 1967 account (the piece was dedicated to Barshai and written for and premiered by his dream-team Moscow Chamber Orchestra).

In short, this is a fabulous disc, which immediately joins my shortlist of most urgently recommendable Weinberg recordings.