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Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025)
Description: A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music.
In Iceland in the 1930s, classical music was only beginning to be seriously practiced, at the same time when musicians of Jewish heritage were fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Despite the country's strict immigration policy, three outstanding young musicians were allowed to settle there: Robert Abraham, Heinz Edelstein, and Victor Urbancic. Their influence on Iceland's music scene as conductors, instrumentalists, teachers, and scholars proved invaluable. In Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution t...