The Landscape of Exile

Composers fleeing risk and persecution have often had mixed emotions about their adopted cities. Schoenberg and Korngold thrived in the US but yearned for Vienna. Rachmaninov made his fortune there but never felt settled. Closer to home, Egon Wellesz arrived in the UK in 1938, and eventually settled in Oxford, as a fellow of Lincoln College, where this afternoon’s event takes place, overlooked by his portrait. Katy Hamilton explores what exile meant to this wide range of composers in a talk illustrated by performances from former Oxford Song Young Artists Katy Thomson and Rustam Khanmurzin.