This concert performed by the Ensemble Hans Gál celebrates the life and music of the Austrian composer Hans Gál (1890–1987) whose highly creative and eventful life straddles most of the 20^th century. A widely performed and successful composer in inter-war Austria and Germany, the ‘annexation’ of Austria to the Third Reich in 1938 drove him, like so many others, into uncertain exile in Britain. Following release from internment as an ‘enemy alien’ in 1940, he settled permanently in Edinburgh as a much-loved university teacher, performer and composer whose craftsmanship and musical aesthetic epitomise the richness of his European cultural heritage, yet his musical values remained rooted in the tonal Austro-German tradition.