Last week, I reviewed two musical programs, one at Juilliard and the other at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, marking the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power in Germany and the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, signaling the start of the Holocaust, with pieces by composers displaced or murdered by the Nazis. Brilliant Artistic Director Steven Blier's New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) concert "Fugitives," on November 18 and 20 at the newly renovated Merkin Concert Hall, had a similar motivation and likewise consisted of music by composers who fled from persecution in Germany, their music labeled "Entartete" (degenerate) and banned by the Nazis, to new lives in America, or who perished in a Nazi concentration camp. In "Fugitives," Blier, at the piano, and young, lyric Metropolitan Opera singers Joseph Kaiser and Kate Lindsey offered musical rewards, historic perspective, and pertinent political insight aplenty.

Considering composers who escaped, the artists examined their works written in Germany and those they created in their new homeland. "Fugitives" began with music by Alexander Zemlinsky, who left Germany, but never really found a niche in the United States. His "Altedeutsches Minnelieder," to a text from that traditional cornucopia "Des Knaben Wunderhorn," begins "Leucht't heller denn die Sonne,/Ihr beiden Äugenlein!" (Brighter than the sun/shine your two eyes) and brightly, indeed, did Kaiser's tenor glow in this ardent romantic song. Lindsey lent her clear mezzo-soprano to "Meeraugen" (Eyes on the sea), an angular and storm expression of passion, and to a touching "Elend" (Misery), his classy take on the blues, inspired by a Langston Hughes poem. Lindsey proceeded to the song "Erwartung," by Arnold Schoenberg, who also resettled in America, and poet Richard Dehmel, covering, in brief, similar territory to that of Schoenberg's later opera, the one-act monodrama "Erwartung," but with a more traditional sound. Zemlinsky conducted the Schoenberg opera's premiere, in London.

A couple of the composers considered here found success in Hollywood, writing music for films. Lindsey sang Erich Korngold's "Gefasster Abschied" (Calm departure), to poetry by Ernst Lothar, harking back to earlier, high Romantic style. Kaiser tackled "Sommer" (Summer), to Siegfried Tresbitsch's text, illuminating both gentle and fiery aspects of the season, and in "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun," a setting of William Shakespeare's sonnet, lovingly described a dear one, not rarified, but real. Friedrich Hollaender, who, on both sides of the Atlantic, wrote songs made famous by Marlene Dietrich, examined a thriving, illegal marketplace in "Wenn der alte motor wieder tackt" (When the old car starts up again), bouncy and wry, looking at goods that will have to do until the economic situation improves, with Lindsey and Kaiser singing words by "Theobald Tiger" (Kurt Tucholsky), and in the louche waltz, "Black Market," sung by Dietrich in "A Foreign Affair," with Lindsey conveying shady resourcefulness born of desperation.

Leaving Germany behind, Kurt Weill found success on Broadway. Kaiser contributed a hard-hitting account of grim financial circumstances in the deceptively breezy "Lottery Agent's Tango," from "Der Silbersee" (Silver Lake), Weill's last work before he left Germany, with lyrics by Georg Kaiser and English singing translation by David Drew, and in the ballad "Love Song," from "Love Life," written with Alan Jay Lerner, depicted an individual in a straitened position, who can still spare a fond embrace for America. In the upbeat tribute "How Can You Tell an American," from "Knickerbocker Holiday," with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, the two singers limned the proud independent citizen, with whom, Blier said, one could identify "whether you're a tundra-melting whacko" or someone who "feels that torturing people in Guantanamo is not cool." Lindsey went on to give an emotional performance "Wie lange noch?" (How much longer), concerning Hitler's destruction of Germany, cast as a melancholy torch song of love betrayed, which was commissioned from Weill, with words by Walter Mehring, for broadcast behind enemy lines, on Voice of America.

There were four serious songs by Hanns Eisler, who left Germany and sought refuge here, only to be deported, back to Germany, in the Cold War Era, for supposed Communist sympathies. Bertolt Brecht wrote most of the lyrics. In Eisler's "Ändere die Welt, sie braucht es," which Blier summed up as "change the world, it needs it," Kaiser quietly explored the planet in trouble, before building to a sudden crescendo, and in the off-kilter sea song, "Die Landschaft des Exils" (The Exile's Landscape), called by Blier "a queasy little barcarolle," marked by "weariness," caught sight of California with relief. Lindsey joined Kaiser for an earnest pacifist protest, "Der Graben," which translates both as trenches and graves, to Tucholsky's words, expressing empathy for those who suffer losses on the battlefield and indicting those who profit from war, and for "Friedenslied" (Peace Song), after Neruda, wishing for peace bilingually, to words of Brecht and Eric Bentley, beginning almost as a lullaby, but growing in intensity.

Tucholsky, also a composer, did not survive, having fled Germany for Sweden, where he was refused citizenship and committing suicide. As a composer, he was represented by the witty "Sleepless Lady," an insomniac's lament, amusing to one who can identify, sung by Lindsey in Corinne Jacker's English translation. From the oeuvre of Franz Schreker, who had a stroke and died after the Nazis deprived him of his teaching positions, Kaiser offered "Unendliche Liebe" (Eternal Love), after Tolstoy, an outpouring as fervent as its title suggests. A composer who survived and reached New York, but fell into obscurity, was Schreker's student Georg Jokl, whose lulling "Abendlied" (Evening Song), written with Fritz Lampi, Lindsey sang sensitively.

Two students of Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann, whose music showed sharp contrast, were obliged by the Nazis to make music in Theresienstadt, the so-called "model Jewish settlement" which was actually a concentration camp, where they produced, respectively, their operas "Brundibar" and "Der Kaiser von Atlantis," and eventually perished at Auschwitz. Lindsey sang the former's subdued "Fünf Lieder" (Five Songs), to texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, the ancient Roman Catullus and, for the slightly whimsical "Vice versa," Christian Morgenstern, and Kaiser, the latter's tonally colorful "O schöne Hand, Kelch, dessen Duft Musik" (O Lovely Hand, like a Chalice of Music), to Ricarda Hult's poetry, which demonstrated that, had he been permitted to live, Ullmann might have give Richard Strauss some stiff competition.

Turning to an operetta by Emmerich Kálmán for an encore and faced with a choice of an excerpt from "Arizona Lady," involving John McCain's state, versus one from "The Duchess of Chicago," where Barack Obama is from, Blier, Lindsey and Kaiser went, naturally enough, with the latter, and cheerfully sang the praises of America and the Charleston, in German and English.

NYFOS' season at Merkin Hall, 129 West 67th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, continues with "Voices of the Jewish Diaspora," with Sephardic melodies arranged by Alberto Hemsi and Roberto Sierra, theater music by Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Joseph Rumshinsky, and art songs by Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud and Anton Rubinstein, performed by Dina Kuznestova, Rinat Shaham, Steven Goldstein, Blier, and Michael Barrett, on February 10 and 12; "Songs of the Irish Poets," with words by Thomas Moore, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Paul Muldoon, set by Ludwig van Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, Michael Balfe and Samuel Barber, performed by Joelle Harvey, Liza Forester, Paul Appleby, Todd Boyce and other members of the Caramoor Vocal Rising Stars Program, and Blier, Barrett and fiddler Paul Woodiel, on March 17; and "The Welcome Shore," music by Sir Edward Elgar, Gabriel Fauré, Carlos Guastavino, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Johannes Brahms, Noël Coward and Pauline Viardot, performed by Michelle Areyzaga, Sasha Cooke, Philip Cutlip, Blier and Barrett, on May 19 and 21. All concert are at 8 p.m. and tickets, at $40, 45 and 55, are available at the Merkin Hall box office, by phone at 212/501-3330, or on line at www.kaufman-center.org. NYFOS' gala, "Carried Away," featuring lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, takes place on April 21, with performance at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall at 7 p.m. and dinner at the Rainbow Room's Pegasus Suite at 8:30 p.m., with tickets at $750 and $1,000 available from www.nyfos.org and 646/230-8380.