Valentine Michaud was the first ever saxophone soloist to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic. She and her regular collaborator, pianist Akvile Silekaite, comprise the award-winning AKMI Duo. They debut on AVIE with Beyond the Wall, an album of contrasting 20th-century sonatas linked by history and geography.

Edison Denisov's Soviet serialism, tinged with forbidden jazz influences, took a cue from the American modernism of William Albright. Austro-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff embraced avant garde and jazz idioms, leading the Nazis to brand his music "degenerate"; he perished in the Wülzburg prison camp in 1942. Paul Hindemith fell in and out of favour with the Nazis, leading him to immigrate to Switzerland and later America. His popular Saxophone Sonata is by turns lyric and dramatic, imbued with irony and humour.