In the year 2018, as we reflect on 1918 and in Austria and the Czech Republic, on the year 1938, we encounter more and more references suggesting a repeat of Weimar Constitution Germany:… Continue reading →

(Heimat Erde March by Robert Frey aka Freistadtl) Over the last months, the exil.arte archive has acquired an eclectic collection of composers and musicians, which I hope sets the scene for how the… Continue reading →

(“Verwehte Blätter” – “Scattered Leaves” no. 8 Rasch; Fort Wayne Philharmonic, conductor Andrew Constantine: Toccata Classics) It seems incredible that the first time I wrote about the composer Walter Bricht was five years… Continue reading →

This posting follows an interview conducted with me at the Bregenz Festival in July 2018 where they presented Berthold Goldschmidt’s opera Beatrice Cenci. The close relationship I enjoyed with Bertold Goldschmidt has been… Continue reading →

A couple of months ago, I received an email from a producer at the BBC informing me that they were putting together a programme on Franz Werfel, and more specifically on his book… Continue reading →

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 →