Walter Arlen (b. 1920) is one of the last living composers of the generation the Nazis sought to extinguish. He has always been a composer of the small form and has written tonal music. Apart from works like Die letzte Blaue for piano solo (Monotypes, Mementos), this double CD by the Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Wnukowski also contains works for piano and violin (Daniel Hope) and songs for soprano (Rebecca Nelsen) and baritone (Christian Immler). A unique feature is the three-part work ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ for piano and metronome, written in 1995 after a visit to Auschwitz.
