Peter Diamand, CBE (8 June 191316 January 1998) was an arts administrator and director of the Edinburgh International Festival from 1965 to 1978. Diamand was born in Berlin on 8 June 1913, and educated there, but held Austrian nationality. In the early 1930s, being Jewish,The Guardian, 14 April 2009
/ref> he fled to Amsterdam to escape Nazism. While there, he worked as secretary to pianist Artur Schnabel. Diamand spent some time in a Dutch concentration camp before escaping. He and his mother needed to hide from the Nazis, in attics and other cramped places, with inadequate food.Times Online, 25 April 2009
/ref> Schnabel's last student, pianist

Maria Curcio Maria Curcio (27 August 1918 or 191930 March 2009) was an Italian classical pianist who became a sought-after teacher. Her students included Barry Douglas, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Martha Argerich, Evelyne Brancart, Radu Lupu, Dame Mitsuko Uchida, ...

, looked after them, at great risk and high cost to her own health and career. In 1947, they married. They divorced in 1971. He subsequently married American violinist, Sylvia Rosenberg. He appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme '' Desert Island Discs'' on 15 August 1966, and was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972. He was also Artistic advisor for the Orchestre de Paris between 1976 and 98. He was made Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in February 1996.Archives of the order des Arts et des Lettres.
/ref> Diamand died on 16 January 1998, in Amsterdam.

References

1913 births 1998 deaths People from Berlin Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Arts administrators Austrian expatriates in the Netherlands Austrian expatriates in the United Kingdom Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Austrian Jews Edinburgh Festival Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres {{UK-painter-20thC-stub