For over 30 years, Jascha Nemtsov has been researching the history of the New Jewish School in music and the work of its composers.

The New Jewish School was an association of composers that was active at the beginning of the 20th century and created a national Jewish style in art music. These were works in European forms and genres that contained elements of Jewish liturgical music and Jewish folklore from Eastern Europe. Their emergence was encouraged by the “renaissance of folklore” in European music at the time, with a number of national styles as models: The Czech school with Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák, the Hungarian school with Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, the Norwegian school with Edvard Grieg, but especially the Russian “Mighty Handful” with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky.

The history of the New Jewish School began in 1908 with the founding of a Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg. Soon branches were opened in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and other cities. For young composers including Joseph Achron, Joel (Yuliy) Engel, Michail Gnesin, Alexander and Grigori Krein, Moshe Milner, Solomon Rosowsky, Lazare Saminsky, Lubov Streicher and others, it was an association of like-minded people; the atmosphere was collegial, but open to criticism.

Russia was initially the most important center of Jewish art music. However, the idea of an independent Jewish style in art music soon inspired Jewish composers in other countries too. From the 1920s onwards, Jewish music societies and music publishers were founded in Germany, Austria, Poland, Yugoslavia and other European countries. They organized numerous concert performances of the works of the New Jewish School, and disseminated sheet music editions. Many famous performers such as the conductor Arturo Toscanini, the violinists Jascha Heifetz and Joseph Szigeti, the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, the pianist Maria Judina and the Beethoven Quartet took part in these performances.