Daniel Hope is a violinist with a mission

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

About 15 years ago, violinist Daniel Hope was driving in his car when heard an unfamiliar string trio on the radio. ‘I pulled over to hear the name of the composer -- it was Gideon Klein,’ Hope recalled. ‘I didn’t know who he was and I Googled it when I got back home.’Hope learned that the composer was Czech and was born in 1919 to Jewish parents. Following a short and brilliant career, the composer died at the age of 26 at a concentration camp.

Since hearing that radio program, Hope has devoted much of his career as a soloist to championing works by composers whose careers and lives were cut short by the Nazi regime.

On Wednesday, he will perform a concert with members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra at Schoenberg Hall at UCLA. The concert will feature music by Erwin Schulhoff, a Jewish composer who also happened to be a Communist. Schulhoff was imprisoned by the Nazis and ultimately died at a concentration camp in 1942.

Hope believes that Schulhoff’s music is ‘powerful’ regardless of the story connected to it.

Read the full story on Daniel Hope’s concert in Sunday’s Arts & Books section.

-- David Ng