Walter Kaufmann was an American ethnomusicologist of Hungarian-Austrian descent. In Berlin and Prague he was in the circles of Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka. However, the rising Nazism forced him to leave Europe. Remarkably, not to Great Britain or California, but to Bombay. In 1957 he ended up in the United States, where he taught musicology at Indiana University. He was best known for two books
… on the ragas of North and South India respectively. However, he also composed. His most famous piece is probably the recognition tune he composed in 1936 as an employee of the All India Radio. However, the rest of his oeuvre has been forgotten. Wrongly, as this album with chamber music shows. It's catchy music with a Slavic panache, spiced up with the excessive seconds of klezmer music. Although the influences of and never far away. (HJ)more
