Among thousands of composers who were banned and oppressed by the Nazis, the case of Hans Winterberg is seriously peculiar. A German-speaking Prague Jew, Winterberg fled after the war to Bavaria, where he received an icy welcome. He lived there in virtual oblivion until his death in 1991.   In 2002, his adopted son Christoph Winterberg sold his catalogue of works to the Sudeten German Music Institute under the condition that it should not see light before 2031. The composer’s grandson Peter Kreitmeir challenged this ruling in court and, with the help of Arnold Schoenberg’s grandson, obtained judgement that it…

When an unknown Polish composer burst into the pop charts in 1992 with an ethereal third symphony, I arranged to meet him twice, in Brussels and London. Gorecki spoke only Polish and German, the latter with reluctance in light of his wartime memories. I got the impression of a stubborn man of strong character with an unshakeable faith in God, a hatred of Communism and a contempt for effete western fashions. Pierre Boulez had called his third symphony ‘merde’ and Gorecki was no less withering about him. Gorecki’s early works, however, were no less modern than Boulez. This luminous…

Four vital traditions inform this recording, the first in a planned cycle by the Czech Philharmonic and its Russian-Jewish chief conductor Semyon Bychkov. Mahler grew up in Czech countryside, in a Jewish family that spoke Yiddish and German. The Czech Philharmonic gave the world premiere of his seventh symphony and keeps scores with Mahler’s markings in its archive, where I have studied them. Mahler twice visited St Petersburg where he had cousins, fostering an empathy with his music that feeds audibly into the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich and into Bychkov’s personal upbringing. All four of these streams inform his interpretation,…