We, the members of the Hegel Quartet, grew up in various corners of the New World: Australia, the USA, Canada. We all independently made our ways to Europe as students, seeking the roots of the musical traditions in which we had grown up. It was pure serendipity that we met in midlife, having already absorbed so much from some of the legendary musicians that populate European stages.
Like so many other Jewish artists and musicians, Fritz Kreisler and Erich Wolfgang Korngold fled war-torn Europe in the 20th Century and eventually became citizens of the United States. These two great artists and many others in the same predicament—also in South America, Canada, Australia, and other countries—spawned a flourishing cultural paradise in their new homelands that would give rise to generations of artists to come, including us.
Korngold dearly missed Vienna and his opera houses even at the height of his success as a Hollywood film music composer, and it seems he died of a broken heart after attempting and failing to re-establish himself in Europe in the 1950s. We would like to think that our second-generation reimagining of these pieces is a small, humble way of repatriating Kreisler and Korngold to their beloved Europe, posthumously, by four reverse expatriates.
produced with the generous support of the Funk Stiftung
The non-profit Funk Foundation is involved in the field of science and education with a focus in the areas of risk research and risk management. It also supports cultural projects, whereby particular attention is paid to the activation of artistically valuable, but currently neglected works of the classical music repertoire. This approach expressly knows no “national” boundaries.