Jews and music: a lot to sing and dance about

“She is a keen sportswoman with a fondness for swimming and riding,” the reporter noted, “and she speaks five languages.”

Many refugees found themselves interned as “aliens”. Three young string players — Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel and Peter Schidlof — were among them; they joined forces with cellist Martin Lovett to form the Amadeus String Quartet.

For refugee composers, life was especially challenging. Some were sidelined in the post-war years because their styles were tonal in an era when serialism, atonality and the use of electronics were in the ascendant.

Berthold Goldschmidt had to work at the BBC; Hans Gál, formerly director of the conservatory in Mainz, became professor of music at Edinburgh University.

When the Festival of Britain in 1951 heralded an explosion of artistic energy, Hess, Menuhin, Haendel and the Amadeus Quartet performed. “The months of May and June are to see such a riot of music-making,” said the JC.

This surge continued in the Sixties, with several Jewish concert promoters leading the way. Victor and Lilian Hochhauser introduced Soviet artists David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, as well as the Bolshoi and Kirov (later Mariinsky) opera and ballet companies.

Meanwhile, Raymond Gubbay spotted a market gap for accessible, affordable concerts. “You don’t need three tenners to go to Turandot,” he would say. “You can get in for two fivers.”

The musical power couple of the 1960s, Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré (who converted to Judaism), collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Zubin Mehta in joyous music-making, preserved on film in the documentaries of Christopher Nupen. Du Pré inspired a generation of British cellists, including Steven Isserlis, Raphael Wallfisch and Robert Cohen.

Fanny Waterman, a Jewish piano teacher, in 1963 founded the Leeds International Piano Competition, one of the most important contests in the world, launching the careers of soloists Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia and András Schiff.

When the USSR began to allow Jewish emigration to Israel in the Seventies, a wave of musicians emerged.

Some were important teachers, such as the violin professor Felix Andrievsky and pianist Irina Zaritskaya; others were performers. In 1989, the curly-haired, 15-year-old violinist Maxim Vengerov took the Wigmore Hall by storm. Ten years later, the 20-something conductor, Vladimir Jurowski, was appointed music director of Glyndebourne.

In 2021, aged 49, he stepped down from the London Philharmonic Orchestra as the longest-serving maestro ever to hold the principal conductorship.

Around the turn of the millennium, renewed acceptance of tonal music made possible the rehabilitation of forgotten composers. Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Mieczyslaw Weinberg are becoming household names at last.

A new generation of musicians is on the rise. With composers such as Thomas Adès, Max Richter, Nimrod Borenstein and Na’ama Zisser and younger performers such as violist Shiry Rashkovsky and violinist Sasha Raikhlina, there is plenty to celebrate.