Robert Kahn: Leaves from the Tree of Life: Quintet/Romanze/Lieder (CD Album) – Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn was born in Mannheim in 1865 and died in Biddenden, Kent in 1951. Kahn became an influential professor of music at the Berlin Hochschule and before that had his works performed by the Joachim Quartet and the Berlin Philharmonic under Hans von Bulow. He avoided large scale romantic forms and became famed for his songs, choral works, chamber music and the huge Tagebuch in Tonen, (Music from the Tree of Life) a collection of solo piano works, suites for piano and lieder that run to over 1100 pieces. Branded degenerate’ by the National Socialists, he was thrown out of his teaching positions and, in 1937, he left for the UK, settling in Kent and composing right up to his death. This album is a fascinating introduction to a composer that political extremism and hatred tried and failed to erase.