In ‘The Long Dream of Home’ we explore composers and music touched by the loss of a homeland. Alongside works by composers such as Kurt Weill, Erich Korngold and Bohuslav Martinu who fled Nazi tyranny in Europe for a safer life in the USA, and works by Russian emigres Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky, we also feature the premiere of a newly commissioned work by Ukrainian-Australian composer Catherine Likhuta, People of Sky and Wheat. In his work Larino, Safe Haven, Australian composer George Dreyfus marked the occasion of a reunion - fifty years since he and fourteen other Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany arrived in Australia and were housed together for a year in a large house ‘Larino’ in Melbourne, before dispersing all over the world. We also feature a new arrangement of Ernest Bloch’s moving Prayer from Jewish Life as well as the haunting Song of the Birds - a traditional Catalan Christmas Song which famous Spanish Cellist Pablo Casals used to perform at all his concerts after fleeing Franco controlled Spain for a life of exile in France.
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