Between two worlds: discovering the music of Robert Kahn (1865-1951)  

Almost 70 years ago, in May 1951, the late Romantic composer Robert Kahn died in Biddenden, Kent. He was one of about 400 mostly Jewish musicians who found refuge in Britain from Nazi persecution. Since 2012, our ‘Singing a Song in a Foreign Land’ project at the Royal College of Music has been researching their legacies, discovering some wonderful music along the way.

One of these discoveries is the Tagebuch in Tönen (Diary in Sounds) by Robert Kahn. After a long and successful career as a composer and pianist that begun with generous support from Johannes Brahms, Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann in the 1880s, Kahn was removed from his position at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin in 1934 and left unable to publish or perform. To keep himself occupied he turned to writing a diary of piano miniatures, surprised by this ‘sprudeling fountain’ of inspiration. He continued this diary after his emigration to Britain in 1939. Titled Leaves from the Tree of Life, it reached the staggering number of 1160 pieces, about 30 hours of music. Excerpts from this deeply personal, sometimes nostalgic but ultimately life-affirming cycle, played by Danny Driver, form the centerpiece of Ensemble Émigré’s album.

The CD also presents a selection of Kahn’s over 250 published lieder. His beautifully melodic, touching and sometimes witty settings of poems by Gerhard Hauptmann, Christian Morgenstern and Eduard Mörike create a sense of naturalness, sincerity and spirituality. The final item on the disc is the world premiere recording of the gripping Quintet Op. 54 for violin, clarinet, horn, cello and piano. The piece has an almost orchestral texture and evidences Kahn’s stature as a composer whose chamber music was championed by leading performers of his time such as the Joachim Quartet or the violinist Adolf Busch.

Firmly established at the Königliche Hochschule in Berlin by the beginning of the 20th century, Kahn remained at the centre of the German capital’s cultural life for decades and counted leading figures such as the physicist Albert Einstein, with whom he shared a somewhat similar physical appearance, among his friends. Like that of other émigrés such as Hans Gál (1890-1987) or Egon Wellesz (1885-1974), Kahn’s music was widely published and performed before it was banned by the Nazis.

Now there is renewed interest in this music. These composers’ stories of migration and transcultural mobility resonate with debates about refugees, nationalism and identity today. Our research aims to understand how their music and stories can be best presented to modern audiences.

There is a strong dystopian element in these stories. Persecution and victimhood are often foregrounded, for example when their music is performed in events that commemorate the holocaust. While the horrors and injustice they and many others suffered must never be forgotten, this can sometimes make it difficult to judge their music on its merits. As in a criminal court, attention on the crime can overshadow the victim. On the other hand, writers such as Edward Said and Vilém Flusser have emphasised that migration also has a positive, utopian dimension. Increasingly, migration is seen not only as a central experience of the human condition, but also as essential for sociocultural progress. Stories of individuals who have coped with difficult circumstances as refugees, bridged cultural boundaries and made contributions to their new environments offer valuable insights and deserve to be celebrated.

To find out how audience members and performers related to Robert Kahn’s music and story, we distributed a number of questionnaires at recent concerts. At the German Embassy in London in November 2018, more than half of the respondents felt that the story of Kahn’s creativity in exile and persecution by the Nazis made his music more interesting today. None of the audience had ever heard of Kahn, but 60% rated his music as equal to that of Schubert and Brahms, describing it as: vibrant, rhythmic, playful, romantic, lyrical, invigorating, charming, amusing and tuneful. Performers at the Akademie der Künste Berlin in March 2019 singled out the touching emotional nature of Kahn’s music as well as the unexpected harmonies, the chromatic lines, the interesting use of registers and timbres of the piano and the structural innovation and lyricism of the vocal writing.

When asked if knowledge of Kahn’s experience as an émigré made them hear and perform the music differently, respondents overwhelmingly said yes, some pointing out that the deep humanity contained in his music becomes especially poignant in connection with his story. My own experience of performing Kahn’s Lieder confirms this, making me a passionate advocate for his music. 

Find out more about this research:

www.musicmigrationmobility.com

www.rcm.ac.uk/singingasong