He was born in
Rimbach in the
Odenwald, the son of Leopold Kahn, a mathematician and synagogue cantor. He studied piano and composition at the
Hoch Conservatory in
Frankfurt, where his teachers included
Paul Franzen and
Bernhard Sekles; he concluded his studies in 1928, although he had been giving public recitals of classical and contemporary repertoire since 1919. He then worked for Radio Frankfurt as a pianist, harpsichordist, composer and arranger, reporting to
Hans Rosbaud, director of the Radio's music department. In April 1933 he was dismissed from his post by the Nazis and emigrated to Paris with his wife Frida (née Rabinowitch). At the beginning of
World War II he was interned as an enemy alien at the
Camp des Milles in the southeastern France;. In 1955, after giving a piano recital, Kahn suffered a
cerebral haemorrhage and spent many months in a coma until his death at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Kahn wrote several distinctive keyboard works including the
Ciaconna dei tempi di guerra (1943) composed for
Ralph Kirkpatrick to play on the harpsichord, though it is also performable on piano. ==References==