Ensemble Epomeo’s 2012 debut recording for Avie brought together, for the first time on one disc, the complete string trio output of two composers whose lives were shaped by the same catastrophe from opposite ends: Hans Gál, who escaped it, and Hans Krása, who didn’t. The trio, violinist Caroline Chin, violist David Yang and cellist Kenneth Woods, pair Gál’s Serenade in D, Op.41 and his later Trio in F sharp minor, Op.104, with Krása’s Tanec (Dance) and his Passacaglia and Fuga.
Hans Gál (1890–1987) was a successful, well-regarded composer in Vienna and then Mainz until the rise of the Nazi party forced him out of Germany in 1933; after a period in Vienna and then internment as an “enemy alien” in Britain during the war, he settled permanently in Edinburgh, where he taught at the University of Edinburgh and was one of the founding figures behind the Edinburgh International Festival. His music, lyrical, contrapuntally assured, rooted in a late-Romantic and neo-Classical language rather than the more radical modernism of some contemporaries, has undergone a significant critical rehabilitation in recent decades, this recording among the projects contributing to it.
Hans Krása (1899–1944) had a very different fate. A Czech composer active in Prague’s modernist circles in the 1920s and 30s, he was deported to the Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto in 1942, where, like a number of composers held there, he remained musically active under desperate circumstances, best known for the children’s opera Brundibár, performed dozens of times by the ghetto’s children before Krása was sent to Auschwitz and murdered in October 1944, along with much of Terezín’s musical community.
Placing their string trios side by side isn’t just a scholarly pairing: it lets Krása’s music, most of which only survives at all because of small acts of preservation amid catastrophe, be heard on genuinely equal musical terms with a better-known contemporary, rather than only ever as a historical footnote.
Critical reception
The recording was well received on release: MusicWeb International named it a Recording of the Month, and it was also reviewed in Fanfare Magazine, real critical attention that helped bring both composers’ chamber output to a wider audience beyond specialists in Holocaust-era music.
About the performers
Ensemble Epomeo, formed by violinist Caroline Chin, violist David Yang and cellist Kenneth Woods, made this disc its recording debut for Avie. Kenneth Woods, also a conductor with a strong reputation for advocacy of underrepresented 20th-century repertoire, has continued to champion both composers well beyond this recording.
A note on this page
No original mmmusic review text for this page survived in any archive we could recover, though the page’s existence is independently confirmed, Ensemble Epomeo’s own label network linked back to it as press coverage at the time. Rather than guess at what was originally written, the text above has been written fresh from verified facts about the recording, its composers and its performers.
Questions about this recording
What's on this recording?
Hans Gál's Serenade in D, Op.41 and Trio in F sharp minor, Op.104, alongside Hans Krása's Tanec (Dance) and Passacaglia and Fuga, the complete string trio output of both composers on one disc.
What's the Edinburgh connection?
Hans Gál fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and eventually settled in Edinburgh, where he taught at the University of Edinburgh and helped found the Edinburgh International Festival, making this a recording with a direct link to the city mmmusic itself was based in.
What happened to Hans Krása?
Krása was deported to the Terezín ghetto, where he remained active as a composer, best known for the children's opera Brundibár, performed there many times, before being murdered at Auschwitz in October 1944.
Is this recording still available to buy?
Yes, Avie's catalogue number AV2259 remains findable through the label and classical retailers. We don't run an in-house shop, so we link out to Amazon and Discogs below.
