Music Heard By No ONE 1939 WHEN THE WORLD FOREVER CHANGED Concerto For Piano and Orchestra

Like so many, I have always been mesmerized by 1939. Indeed, this year was the turning point between what the world once was and what it finally became and in so many ways, remains to this very day. Over the years, you've probably seen the old newsreels of the Stuka dive-bombers in the skies over Warsaw and heard the terrifying sirens in their nose cones as they swept down on the city, leaving whole wall sections of burning buildings collapsing as they banked back into the sky. You've probably seen the long lines of refugees on the roads outside the Polish cities as they were strafed by the ME-109s and might have wondered how you would have felt had you been among them with all your worldly possessions in rubble behind you. Many times, I have thought what it must have been like when this year had closed for those at Dunkerque as they waited, waited for their perilous rescue.

Then too, those in America in 1939 surely had many of the same hopes for their future lives as you and I do today. Everyone wants love, peace and happiness but somewhere in their hearts, they must have known that the United States must soon enter the war and many of their hopes and dreams would be shattered on some field afar where their lives would be claimed or some disabling injury would brutally leave them disabled for life. I fear I could have not shown the courage they had. This music is a small effort to portray the hopes and dreams of so very many in 1939 and all that was to follow.