The lost generation

After lying forgotten for decades, a revelatory tranche of musical history is reaching our ears at last: the work of composers whose lives and careers were devastated by the Nazis. War, displacement, prejudice and ideology all played roles in their suppression, but the longterm result was the skewing of how we view 20th-century music. Some of these figures have been gloriously rehabilitated: Erich Korngold, Mieczyslaw Weinberg and the Czech composers incarcerated in the Terezín concentration camp – Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullmann. But they are the tip of the iceberg.

There is much more to find, and among those who have made their discovery a personal mission is Simon Wynberg, artistic director of the Artists of the Royal Conservatory (ARC) Ensemble in Canada. Wynberg, an Edinburgh-born ‘recovering musicologist’ as he describes himself, first became interested in obscure repertoire as a guitarist. When the Royal Conservatory asked him to create an ensemble comprised of members of its faculty, he decided it was essential for them to have a unique identity: they would find and promote superb