Basking in the success of his recent London concert with Orchestra of the Swan at Cadogan Hall - "an evening of transcendentally beautiful playing" which had ClassicalSource.com's reviewer "enthralled from beginning to end due to the diligence over perfect pacing and dynamic contrasts" - Kenneth Woods is enjoying the variety of his spring season that makes the most of the uncommonly diverse strings to his bow. At the same time, there are common threads that weave throughout his activities, whether conducting, recording, performing, arranging or broadcasting.

As a conductor, Woods' latest recording continues his revelatory pairing of the world-premiere recordings of Hans Gál's Symphonies with those by Schumann. The new Avie release (AV 2231, available 19 March) features Gal's Fourth - with "the excellent Orchestra of the Swan under Kenneth Woods it casts the twentieth century in a new light, one of obstinate cheerfulness and determined optimism, a refusal to be bowed by contemporary events, which may in the end be more useful" - alongside Schumann's Second, which "Woods conducts with profound romantic feeling." (Words and Music) Returning to the recording studio in May, Woods will conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time in a programme of Franck, de Falla and Turina for the SOMM label.

Woods has become one of today's most committed advocates of the music of Hans Gál, who escaped Nazi persecution in the 1930's and eventually settled in Edinburgh where he lived to the age of 97. Other composers were of course less fortunate, among them Victor Ullman who perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Woods transcribed Ullman's String Quartet No. 3 for string orchestra in 1999, having studied the chamber work as a cello student at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music under Henry Meyer, long-time second violinist of the La Salle String Quartet, who himself had been interred in Auschwitz and Birkenau before escaping at the end of the War. Woods' arrangement will be recorded 21 March with David Parry conducting the English Chamber Orchestra as part of series for the Gramola label which promotes and supports the recuperation of works by Austrian composers. The recording is due for release in October 2012. In addition, the arrangement is scheduled to be performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Musikverein's Brahmssaal in November 2012.

Chamber music, Hans Gál and another composer of "Entartete Musik" (degenerate music, as labelled by the Nazis) come together as Woods picks up his cello to join his Ensemble Epomeo for the world-premiere recordings of Gál's Serenade for String Trio, Op. 41 and Trio, Op. 104, paired with works by Gál's contemporary Hans Krása, Tanec and Passacaglia and Fugue. The Austrian-born Gál and Czech-born Krása shared a Jewish heritage, but whereas Gál escaped Nazi oppression, Krása was interred in Theresienstadt where he was instrumental in organising the cultural life of the concentration camp, then sent to Auschwitz where he perished in 1944. Tanec and Passacaglia and Fugue were written in the last year of his life. The recording, for AVIE, is scheduled for release in July 2012.

Woods' cello credentials and broadcasting talents shone through in a recent programme for BBC Radio 3, The Cellists That Time Forgot. In conversation with Julian Lloyd Webber and music historian Tully Potter, Woods debated and discussed why four titans of the cello-playing world - Felix Salmond, Milos Sadlo, Antonio Janigro and Leonard Rose - are relatively unsung today.

Author of A View from the Podium, Woods is one of today's most-widely read and respected classical music bloggers. He was recently invited by Gramophone magazine to contribute a guest blog discussing his new release of Gál's Fourth and Schumann's Second Symphonies, in which he posits that both are 'more-than-meets-the-eye' composers.

To learn more about Kenneth Woods and his rare versatility visit http://kennethwoods.net.

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