Albert Catell performs Dvorak

Albert Catell was one of the musicians who escaped the Holocaust. He got a letter from the violinist Bronislav Hubermann, who was putting together one of the best orchestras in the world for Palestine, an orchestra consisting exclusively of Jewish musicians who had lost their posts under the Nazis. "At that time, Palestine meant nothing to us. It could have been the moon, for all we knew", he sayed in an interview which was conducted by Barbara Berger at New York's Café Mozart for this recording. "Yet the orchestra ended up being formed of 110 of the very finest musicians. Arturo Toscanini turned his back on Bayreuth and Salzburg and went to Palestine to conduct this orchestra. He stayed for two seasons, this was in 1936."