Hans Gál

Prize-winning Austro-Hungarian Jewish composer, teacher and pianist Hans Gál was born near Vienna on 5 August 1890. He studied at the New Vienna Conservatory and later taught there.

His Brahmsian early music was replaced by a polyrhythmic mature style.

Early successes led to an appointment as director of Mainz Conservatory in Germany from 1920 until 1933, when the Nazis occupied Mainz and Gál was dismissed and his music banned.

Forced to leave Germany, he ended up in Scotland, teaching at Edinburgh University, but never regained the platform that his music had enjoyed before his displacement, and became one of the lost generation of Jewish composers.

Gál died in Edinburgh on 3 October 1987. A significant number of recordings of his music have begun to appear in the early years of the third millennium.

A selection of articles about Hans Gál

Classical music news - Music, Migration and Mobility - Malcolm Miller previews a new exhibition in London about émigré composers

Profile. From Live Performance to Live Streaming - Anett Fodor continues her series of interviews with some of our era's most interesting artists, and today she talks to British pianist Leon McCawley about some of the new challenges to artistic life

Vital Work - Margaret Fingerhut's UK piano recital tour raising awareness of the needs of refugees, recommended by Mike Wheeler

Ensemble. Nicely Alert - Sarah Beth Briggs and James Lisney in Nottingham, enjoyed by Mike Wheeler

CD Spotlight. Fluent Inventiveness - Viola sonatas by Gál and Krenek, recommended by Howard Smith. '... remarkable high standards.'

CD Spotlight. Contrapuntal Flight - Piano duos by Hans Gál, heard by Robert Anderson. '... played with their customary skill by Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow.'