As so often with an attempt to right a wrong, language gets in the way. “Entartete Musik” is a Nazi term, commonly translated as “Degenerate Music”, when actually, it more accurately means “Deformed… Continue reading →

Some four years ago on this blog, I wrote an article on the extraordinary educator Eugenie Schwarzwald. That was before I read Deborah Holmes’ important Schwarzwald biography, sadly only available in German.  Holmes… Continue reading →

I’ve just given a talk on the first ten months of the exil.arte Centre at the Jewish Music Institute’s “Jewish Music Fair” held at Alyth Synagogue in London. This posting is a modified… Continue reading →

The Shoah is by and large an area I try to avoid on this blog. For the purposes of the “Forbidden Music” blog, what was lost is more important than the manner of… Continue reading →

This is a talk I gave as part of Oxford’s 2017 Lieder Festival on October 20th. Originally, I was asked to speak on Mahler’s Vienna, but somewhere along the line the request changed… Continue reading →

(Richard Fuchs’ “Vom Jüdischen Schicksal”, written for the Kulturbund. World Premiere in Wellington New Zealand, 2014: Jenny Wollerman, Christian Thurston, Cantoris Choir, NZSM Orchestra, Donald Maurice – conductor) One of the most unsettling… Continue reading →

Returning from the summer break, I would have preferred writing about music AND politics, but these last months have subjected all of us to lots of politics, leaving little time for music. There… Continue reading →

One thing cannot go unmentioned and that’s the fact that 2017 is a double Korngold anniversary: 120 years old, and 60 years since his death. Revivals are taking place, one of which is… Continue reading →

This is the title of the exhibition that accompanies the official opening of the exil.arte centre at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts on May 22nd. It is also the reason that… Continue reading →

Historically, there are cultural precedents that are worth considering. Nobody disputes this and though it’s perhaps too easy to carry on raising the spectre of Hitler, what I find interesting at this Trump/Brexit… Continue reading →