After the critical acclaim of their last album ‘Jewish Vienna’ (ONYX4253), the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich and conductor Daniel Grossmann turn to repertoire from two composers who have all but vanished from history, one of them, Jozef Koffler, a Polish Jew who was captured with his wife and young son by German troops in the city of Lwów in 1944, deported to the ghetto in Wieliczka and murdered by one of the German Einsatzgruppen near Krosno where he and his family had been hiding after the liquidation of the ghetto.

Engel was born in Ukraine and moved to Palestine in 1924. He found it difficult to adapt to life there, and his health declined, he died in 1927.He did much to keep the traditions of European Jewish music alive and moved (whilst in Germany) in circles that included Heifetz, Godowsky and Piatigorsky. Weinberg was persecuted throughout his life by the Soviet authorities, and it is only of late that he is recognised as one of the major composers of the mid-20th century. He was supported by Shostakovich, but this could not save him from arrest and in 1953 he was arrested and sent to the Lubyanka. Shostakovich was instrumental in obtaining his release a few months later.