Sergei Rachmaninoff (Bain News Service, publisher – Library of Congress) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music I recently acquired for the British Library Sound Archive an important collection of discs professionally recorded from radio broadcasts during the 1930s. The donor, Mike Sell, had known Harold Vincent Marrot in the…

On 11 March 1946 Hanns Alexander arrested Rudolf Höss, a German SS officer who was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz. Hanns, who was born in Berlin in 1917, fled Nazi persecution in the late 1930s because he was Jewish. He fled to England with his parents and siblings, and joined…

Artist Sophie Herxheimer, creator of the artwork for the British Library’s new Voices of the Holocaust website, reflects on her approach to contextualising and representing the voices of Holocaust survivors. This collection of interviews with Holocaust survivors encompasses themes of war, suffering, imprisonment, exile and loss. But there are also…

This week’s post comes from Gail Tasker, Audio Project Cataloguer. As a music fan, I’ve often come across the word ‘Muzak’ without giving it much thought. For many, it signifies the tinny sound of soft instrumental music backgrounding an elevator ride or a customer service call. For others, it’s a…

This week’s post comes from Tom Miles, Metadata Coordinator for Europeana Sounds. August Wilhelmj (1845-1908) was a violinist and teacher. He was born in Usingen, Germany. Referred to by Liszt as ‘the future Paganini’, he gained a reputation as a child prodigy and was at the height of his career…