ARC Ensemble Artistic Director Inducted into CBC’s In Concert Hall of Fame

Over the span of three decades, the ARC Ensemble  (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) has provided a voice for exiled composers who had graduated from Europe’s finest conservatories and enjoyed successful careers, but were subsequently forced into exile by anti-Semitism and bigotry – their works forgotten. As it marks its 20th anniversary, the ARC Ensemble remains dedicated to the research, recovery and recording of the music produced by these extraordinarily gifted exiles.  

Simon Wynberg is the Artistic Director of ARC Ensemble, and a “musical archaeologist who rescues treasures from their hiding places, blows the dust off them, and brings them to light,” said In Concert host Paolo Pietropaolo when announcing Mr. Wynberg as the newest member of CBC Music’s In Concert Hall of Fame which celebrates the greatest Canadian classical musicians of all time including Glenn Gould, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Angela Cheng, and most recently, Barry Shiffman. 

Mr. Pietropaolo highlighted that not only is Mr. Wynberg a “magnificent classical guitarist, but is the driving force behind the ARC Ensemble’s award-winning series of recordings, the Music in Exile series, and a musical Indiana Jones.”  As a result of Mr. Wynberg’s work, a growing number of hitherto unknown masterworks are rejoining the repertoire and the Ensemble is now among Canada's most distinguished cultural ambassadors. 

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The ARC Ensemble is comprised mainly of the senior faculty of The Royal Conservatory's acclaimed Glenn Gould School, with special guests drawn from its most accomplished students and alumni, and has become one of Canada’s distinguished and influential cultural ambassadors, earning admirers both nationally and abroad. Its concerts and recordings are eagerly received and have garnered enthusiastic reviews and multiple Grammy and JUNO nominations.  

ARC has released nine recordings (on RCA Red Seal and more recently on Chandos Records), including six in its illuminating Music in Exile series. Through its quest to uncover neglected and forgotten 20th century composers, a growing roster of deserving works is now entering the classical canon.   

The group’s first major success was its Music Reborn series which featured composers who had been killed during the Holocaust. A few years later, Mr. Wynberg programmed a weekend dedicated to the works of émigré composers like Erich Korngold and Miklós Rózsa, musicians who had fled Europe during the 1930s and found sanctuary in the U.S. and the U.K. 
  
As he examined the exile experience more deeply, Mr. Wynberg very soon concluded that “dozens of composers of the period still remained unresearched, unassessed and ignored,” and the Music in Exile series was born. The candidates for performance and recording are drawn primarily from the post-1933 period, when National Socialism forced artists to flee Europe and find refuge wherever they might be allowed. After the war, composers whose careers had been diminished by exile, then saw their music dismissed by their younger avant-garde colleagues as reactionary and largely irrelevant. 

The group’s first major success was its Music Reborn series which featured composers who had been killed during the Holocaust. A few years later, Mr. Wynberg programmed a weekend dedicated to the works of émigré composers like Erich Korngold and Miklós Rózsa, musicians who had fled Europe during the 1930s and found sanctuary in the U.S. and the U.K. 
 
As he examined the exile experience more deeply, Mr. Wynberg very soon concluded that “dozens of composers of the period still remained unresearched, unassessed and ignored,” and the Music in Exile series was born. The candidates for performance and recording are drawn primarily from the post-1933 period, when National Socialism forced artists to flee Europe and find refuge wherever they might be allowed. After the war, composers whose careers had been diminished by exile, then saw their music dismissed by their younger avant-garde colleagues as reactionary and largely irrelevant. 

Mr. Wynberg’s detective work might begin with a footnote in a biography, an old concert program, an email from a composer’s relative, or a suggestion from the network of musicologists active in the area of suppressed music. “Fortunately, many scores have survived and are hiding in plain sight in large library collections and archives.” 
  
In resurrecting this forgotten music, ARC Ensemble has created renewed appreciation for a growing list of gifted composers including Ukrainian nationalist Dmitri Klebanov, who was suppressed under Stalin; the Sephardic composer and musicologist Alberto Hemsi, who fled Turkey and Egypt to settle in Paris, and Walter Kaufmann, who found sanctuary in Bombay and created a uniquely personal language by fusing Indian and Western traditions. As a direct result of ARC’s research and recording, Kaufmann’s works are now published by the legendary Viennese publisher Doblinger, and both European and American orchestras are now programming his works. Kaufmann’s Indian Symphony will be reintroduced to an audience at Carnegie Hall in 2024. ARC’s Music in Exile series continues with a November 2023 release of a recording of premieres by Robert Müller-Hartmann who fled Hamburg with his wife in 1937 and settled in England. 
  
Each of the exiled composers that ARC has introduced has both a compelling story of flight and exile, and a body of music of extraordinary range and quality. “It is hugely exciting to uncover a piece that quickens the pulse the first time you hear it,” says Mr. Wynberg, “But the process is also rather nerve-racking as we are always asking audiences to trust our choices in travelling these unexplored paths.” 

Twenty years on, with an alarming rise in anti-Semitism and new waves of cultural repression, the ARC Ensemble’s mission reminds us of how easily lives and careers can be devastated by political and social oppression.

On November 29, The Royal Conservatory presents ARC Ensemble: Celebrating 20 Years in Mazzoleni Hall. The concert begins with Walter Braunfel’s ravishing String Quintet in F sharp Minor, op. 63, one of ARC’s early discoveries. The program also features the lush Romantic works of Frederick Block, whose thriving career was cut short in 1938 when he fled Vienna and moved to New York. Block’s music has not been heard in over 75 years. Block’s String Quartet, op. 23; Piano Quintet, op. 19 and Suite for Clarinet, op. 73 will all receive their Canadian premieres. The ARC Ensemble musicians performing in this concert include Erika Raum (violin), Marie Bérard (violin), Steven Dann (viola), Thomas Wiebe (cello), Joaquin Valdepeñas (clarinet), Kevin Ahfat (piano) and guest performer David Liam Roberts (cello). 

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