Exodus: Jewish Composers in Exile, the second AVIE release by New York-based The Orchestra Now and their founder-director Leon Botstein, brings together three German-speaking Jewish composers born within a few years of one another in the first decade of the 20th century. Joseph Tal, Walter Kaufmann and Marcel Rubin all escaped the Holocaust and embarked on new lives and careers, though with very different trajectories. The works on Exodus were all written during the 1940s by these three young composers striving to find their own voices whilst also adapting to their new environments.

Josef Tal, whose original name was Grünthal, emigrated from Berlin to Palestine in 1934. Influenced by Arnold Schoenberg, he veered towards modernism if not a wholly 12-tone technique. His work Exodus for baritone solo and large symphony orchestra, which weaves modernist techniques with neo classism, is a six-part setting of excerpts from the Bible’s Book of Exodus and the Psalms.

Like Tal, Walter Kaufmann left Berlin in 1934, first bound for India, from there to England, Canada and eventually the United States. Having absorbed the subcontinental art-music tradition during his time in India, Kaufman incorporated the pentatonic raga “Bhupali” into his Indian Symphony, a rhythmically vibrant and colourfully orchestrated three-movement work.

Marcel Rubin’s exile took him first to France, then Mexico City where he lived from 1942 to 1946, returning to his native Vienna in 1947. His Symphony No. 4, written during his time in Mexico, was originally titled “War and Peace” and spanned four movements that portrayed the horrors of war to a more idealised world. Subsequently revised in 1970 and given the title “Dies Irae” (The Day of Wrath), the symphony as heard on this album represents Rubin’s reflections on his war-time experiences.