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A celebration of the musical contribution of refugees from Nazi Europe to British culture

For this concert, part of the nationwide INSIDERS/OUTSIDERS festival, NNLS members Ashley Solomon, Maurice Chernick and Shirli Gilbert will work with Norbert Meyn (Royal College of Music) and Ensemble ÉMIGRÉ to celebrate the contribution of refugees from Nazi Europe to British culture through music.

The programme will trace the lives of Jewish émigré musicians who managed to escape Nazi persecution and helped to bring music in Britain to the world, leading standards it enjoys today. It will include the Huyton Suite for flute and two violins by Hans Gál (1890-1987), written for the only instruments available in the Huyton Internment Camp near Liverpool in 1940, the beautiful Elegy for Cello and Piano by the composer and piano virtuoso Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968), played by the wonderful Gemma Rosefield, and excerpts from the breathtaking Tagebuch in Tönen (Diary in Music) by Robert Kahn, a cycle of 1160 piano pieces written mostly in the composer’s secluded exile in Biddenden, Kent in the 1940s, played by the internationally acclaimed pianist Danny Driver. The programme will be complemented by short excerpts from letters and other historical documents chosen by Shirli Gilbert and Norbert Meyn.

Ensemble ÉMIGRÉ unites musicians in flexible combinations under the directorship of tenor and project curator Norbert Meyn. The Ensemble’s repertoire is closely connected with the performance and research project ‘Singing a Song in a Foreign Land’ at the Royal College of Music (www.rcm.ac.uk/singingasong) and focuses on the work of composers who emigrated to Britain from Nazi Europe. www.ensemble-emigre.com

This concert is co-organised by Norbert Meyn and Rivka Gottlieb, Director of Programming and Communications at NNLS and is kindly supported by John Reizenstein, and is in partnership with the Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre.