Robert Kahn. Late chamber music

The digital collection shows a selection of the unpublished works by composer Robert Kahn (1865-1951) passed down solely in the form of manuscripts, including the Piano Quintet in D major from 1926, the Variationen über ein altes Lied for violin and piano, also from 1926, the Serenade for string trio (1933), and the two songs Ihr (lyrics: Irma Schneider-Franken, 1917) and Sehnsucht (lyrics: Ricarda Huch, 1920), which were originally intended to be published as part of a song cycle under Opus no. 72. The works mentioned above all fall within the composer’s later creative period when he was at the height of his fame. He was appointed an ordinary member of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1916, then elected senator in 1917. The Serenade, on the other hand, Kahn’s last chamber music composition, marks the beginning of his “inner emigration”, before he had to leave Germany in 1939 having been stripped of all offices and honours.

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