The lode of Jewish music of the World War II era, almost unknown until the 1990s, continues to yield compelling new music. Here is a world-premiere recording of the Cello Concerto, Op. 67, of Hans Gál, played by the all-Brazilian pairing of celllist Antonio Meneses and conductor Claudio Cruz, with Britain's Northern Sinfonia. Of Austro-Hungarian Jewish descent, Hans Gál was the director of the Mainz Conservatory when the Nazis came to the city in 1933. Eventually forced to flee to Britain, he had the bad luck to be ...
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The lode of Jewish music of the World War II era, almost unknown until the 1990s, continues to yield compelling new music. Here is a world-premiere recording of the Cello Concerto, Op. 67, of Hans Gál, played by the all-Brazilian pairing of celllist Antonio Meneses and conductor Claudio Cruz, with Britain's Northern Sinfonia. Of Austro-Hungarian Jewish descent, Hans Gál was the director of the Mainz Conservatory when the Nazis came to the city in 1933. Eventually forced to flee to Britain, he had the bad luck to be imprisoned on suspicions of being a Nazi agent. His aunt and sister killed themselves to avoid transportation to Auschwitz, and his son also committed suicide. The Cello Concerto, Op. 67, was composed in 1944 in the wake of these events; there was no performance on the horizon, and indeed the work did not receive its first performance until 1950, in Sweden. It may thus be regarded as highly personal, and yet it does not have the dark content one might expect. Instead the concerto is a...
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