"1939. Standing in front of the orphanage's imposing stone walls, eleven-year-old Jewish twins Helga and Ruth shiver with fear. The war has taken their mother and father, their home in Berlin has been turned to rubble, but their soft, dark eyes meet and Helga gives Ruth a reassuring smile. They should be safe here together. Yet every day bombs fly overhead. And when Ruth becomes desperately unwell, the girls are torn apart. As war rages on, will they...

An account of how the flowering of the European Enlightenment, two World Wars, and the Holocaust can be remembered through the poignant works of music created in their wake. "Eichler shows how four towering composers--Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten--lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores...