Stefan Wolpe was forced to flee Berlin after the National Socialists came to power, as he had publicly positioned himself against the Nazis as a convinced communist and artistic director of the agitprop theater “Truppe 31”. After an odyssey via Prague, Zurich and Vienna, where he took composition lessons with Anton Webern, he emigrated to Palestine with his partner, the Romanian pianist Irma Schoenberg. In Jerusalem, Irma was able to teach piano at the newly founded conservatory and Stefan also received a position as a composition teacher in 1935. His students there included Herbert Brün, Chaim Alexander and Wolf Rosenberg, who had emigrated to Palestine with his family in 1936. We will hear works by Wolpe from the Jerusalem period as well as early piano works by Wolf Rosenberg and the 2nd String Quartet, played by pianist Angelika Nebel and the Seneca Quartet. Pamela Rosenberg, the composer's widow, will be the guest of the evening.

In cooperation with musica reanimata – Förderverein zur Wiederentdeckung NS-verfolgter Komponisten und ihrer Werke e.V.