George Lang of Cafe Des Artistes, New York City

Mr. Lang’s life and career, like the Mendelssohn violin concerto that he loved to play, is composed of moments of innocence and genius, great despair and interminable hope. Like his youth in Hungary, the first movement of that concerto, “Allegro Molto Appassionato”, begins sublimely and innocently before taking several lively and dangerous turns. The young man had a gift for the violin, and although his Jewish family was far from wealthy, neither were they constrained by financial difficulty. They were able to send their son to the Franz Liszt Music Academy, and during those years he seemed destined to be a musical performer. But when he was 19, an important developmental age in the life of any prospective violin prodigy, an already anti-Semitic Hungary began to fall apart at the seams. For Lang, the profound desire for survival became a stronger motivator than his musical ambitions, and in the coming months and years, his choices became not ones that would make him successful, but ones that would save his life. To read full article please go to the following link,
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