Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Wilhelm Grosz

Jazzband

 

Wilhelm Grosz was born in Vienna in 1894 and died in New York at the age of only 45. Like many other Jewish composers of his day, he suffered from the Nazis’ shameful persecution, had to flee from his country (in 1934 he took refuge in England and then in the United States) and found it difficult to acclimatise to countries whose mentality and musical traditions were very different from those of his native country. Although he started off as an avant-garde composer, he had to adapt – in order to survive – by writing easy tunes, some of which even became quite popular. Grosz wrote Jazzband, for violin and piano, in 1923, at a time in which there were as yet no indications of the catastrophe that would soon overtake his country, thereby determining for good his own fate as a composer.

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Performers

Performance