Leonie (‘Lony’) Fraenkel was a German-Jewish exile from Nazi Berlin who set up the Café de Paris on Beethovenstraat in Amsterdam in 1939. In late 1939 she sent a card to greet Peter, her first grandson, newly born in safety in England, and over the next three years she sent a series of letters to Peter and his mother, Lony’s daughter. In 1943 she was deported first to the Westerbork transit camp, and then to Theresienstadt and, finally, in October 1944 to Auschwitz, and was gassed within two days of her arrival. Many years later, that grandson, Peter, now a grandfather himself, discovered Lony’s letters, had them translated and brought them to the attention of the composer Ronald Corp.

Ronald Corp has set Lony’s letters in a series of lyrical arioso recitatives for mezzo-soprano, string quartet and piano, lasting just over an hour. The cycle was first heard at the Proms in St Jude’s, in Hampstead Garden Suburb, north London, in 2017, and now Toccata Classics is releasing its first recording.

The mezzo-soprano Sarah Pring studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and National Opera Studio, both in London. She began her career at Glyndebourne, and now appears frequently at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The Chilingirian Quartet – Levon Chilingirian and Ronald Birks, violins, Susie Mészáros, viola, and Stephen Orton, cello – is one of the world’s most celebrated and widely travelled ensembles. Andrew Brownell is a laureate of several major international piano competitions, including the 2006 Leeds Competition and the 2002 Bach Competition in Leipzig.