Walter Arlen

Walter Arlen was born in Vienna in 1920. His family ran a department store where he grew up and even had his own piano room. In 1938, the Jewish family was dispossessed by the Nazis, the father was deported, then released and immigrated to Great Britain with Walter Arlen’s mother and sister. Walter Arlen — then still Walter Aptowitzer — fled from the Nazis to live with relatives in Chicago before finishing grammar school and studying music in Vienna. During his first years in the USA, Arlen had no piano at his disposal. He became depressed because he was unable to express his musical creativity. Arlen had to compose in order not to fall ill and caught up on his missed music studies. For over 30 years, he was the music critic of The Los Angeles Times and founder and head of the Music Department at Loyola Marymount University. After his retirement, he enriched his oeuvre with many songs and piano compositions, which have only been known since around 2010 and were recorded by exil.arte — the later Exilarte Center of the mdw — University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

Walter Arlen died in 2023 at the age of 103 in Santa Monica, California.