The symposium The Viennese Ball Season of 1938 at the Crossroads of Hope and Despair, Escape and Exile on October 29th, 2025 explores the cultural and political significance of the last Viennese ball season before Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany.
Inspired by a rediscovered souvenir from the Caro & Jellinek company ball scheduled for March 12, 1938, the event—organized in cooperation with the Exilarte Center of the mdw – University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna —examines how music and dance reflected identity, resistance, and farewell on the eve of exile. With scholarly lectures, a seminar, and a staged reading, it highlights the life of composer Leonhard Märker and the role of music in exile and internment. Featuring scholarly contributions by Emily Marker, Mélina Burlaud, Marie-Theres Arnbom, Dietmar Friesenegger, and Gerold Gruber, and musical performances by Romana Amerling, Clemens Seewald and Ulrike Anton, the symposium links research, teaching, and artistic practice in an innovative form of remembrance culture.
This will be followed by a staged reading, accompanied by music from the ball.
Free admission to the symposium and staged reading! No registration required.
The publication featuring texts by and about the twelve-tone composer Philip Herschkowitz, a student of Anton Webern, was released in spring 2025 by the Viennese publishing house Hollitzer.
To mark the presentation of this new publication, two of the editors, Elisabeth Leonskaja and Alexei Lubimov, who were once students of Herschkowitz, will perform the music of those whom Philip Herschkowitz considered influential for his work: Mozart, Beethoven, and Schoenberg.
The young performers—Alexei Grots, Lisa Bormotova, and Constantin Siepermann, as well as the Ineo Quartet—will present compositions from Philip Herschkowitz’s own repertoire.
If you have the time and wish to experience a program of special pieces, we look forward to welcoming you to the free
concert on September 9, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. at the Kleiner Ehrbar-Saal, Mühlgasse 30, 1040 Vienna
You will also have the opportunity to purchase one or more copies of the book “Über Musik” (About Music) (price: € 48).
We warmly welcome you; it is our honor!
On behalf of all participants:
Prof. Gerold Gruber Dr. Michael Hüttler Heidemarie T. Ambros
On Saturday, October 4th, 2025, the “ORF Long Night of Museums” was held throughout Austria.
The mdw Exilarte Center was again taking part. This year the center was once again offering a variety of events, including lectures, concerts and guided tours of the exhibition “Eric Zeisl – Vienna’s Lost Son in Foreign Lands” and through our permanent exhibitions.
SPECIAL EVENTS as part of the ORF Long Night of Museums
1) “Bernhard Klein – A Viennese zither virtuoso in the shadows of oblivion” | lecture by Michael Haider (historian, BMEIA) | Monika Kutter (zither) (start: 6:15 p.m.)
Opening: Dr. Gerold Gruber, Head of the Exilarte Center of the mdw
In his lecture, historian Dr. Michael Haider (BMEIA) shed light on the eventful life and work of the almost forgotten Viennese musician Bernhard Klein (1861–1941). As a celebrated zither virtuoso, composer, and music teacher, Klein shaped the musical life of the turn of the century before he almost disappeared from cultural memory due to persecution, isolation, and his deportation to Riga in 1941.
Musical performance by Dr. Monika Kutter with zither music by Berhard Klein.
2) Chamber music evening in cooperation with the “Missing Voices” initiative – Hans Gál, Walter Bricht, and Henriette Bosmans (start: 8:00 p.m.)
Like the mdw’s Exile Art Center, the Missing Voices initiative is dedicated to rediscovering and raising awareness of composers whose careers and lives were interrupted or destroyed by National Socialism, exile, and discrimination. At the invitation of the mdw’s Exile Art Center, Sarah Bayens (violin) and Dimitri Malignan (piano) performed works by Henriette Bosmans, Hans Gál, and Walter Bricht.
3) “Songs and Piano Music” – a tribute to Georg Tintner (start: 10:00 p.m.)
Aleksandra Bobrowska (piano) and Danae Eleni (soprano) presented a finely curated program focusing on songs and piano works by Georg Tintner. In addition to his poetic settings—based on texts by Rilke, Storm, and Hesse, among others—the program includes works by Chopin, Debussy, and Audric de Oliveira, spanning the expressive spectrum from Romanticism to Impressionism and Modernism. The widow of the composer, Tanya Tintner, will be present at the concert.
4) Quick tours of the exhibition with curator Dr. Karin Wagner (7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.)
Erich Zeisl (1905-1959) is one of those displaced Viennese composers whose works have returned to contemporary musical consciousness thanks to the achievements of exile music research and have found their way into the current canon of literature. Born in Leopoldstadt in 1905, Zeisl was enrolled as a highly talented teenager at the then Academy of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (now the mdw) in 1920/21. It is therefore an important concern of the Exilarte Center to honor this composer, who was so closely associated with Vienna and died in Los Angeles, with an exhibition. Zeisl put his signature to his fate in Austria with the song “Komm süßer Tod”: composed in January 1938 and premiered in Vienna’s Ehrbarsaal in February of that year, it was the last song in the German language to end a flourishing career – shattered by the rise of National Socialism and the Anschluss that immediately followed in March 1938. It is precisely this image of the clash of worlds – Zeisl’s origins, the Café Tegetthoff, were soon “Aryanized”, Zeisl himself escaped to Paris under dramatic circumstances after the November pogrom of 1938 – that marks the entrance to an exhibition that aims to make the rupture of exile into a “before” and “after” tangible. The public’s perception and reception of the works in this “before” and “after” were fundamentally different. The exhibition traces these moments of an exile biography, the narrative line follows the exile locations Paris, New York and Los Angeles. While abroad, his style changed in the direction of “Jewish art music”, which is also the subject of the exhibition. Barbara Zeisl-Schoenberg, Zeisl’s daughter, and Randy Schoenberg, his grandson, have donated the entire correspondence (over 5,000 letters) and the musical estate to the archive of the mdw’s Exilarte Center.
A concert evening dedicated to the chamber music works of the composer Hans Winterberg (1901-1991). Under the title “Echo of the Unheard”, a selection of his works will be interpreted by students of the mdw.
Born in Prague, Winterberg’s artistic career was severely impaired by persecution, deportation and exile. As a Jewish composer, he survived Theresienstadt and emigrated to Germany in 1947, where he had to re-establish himself as a musician under difficult circumstances. It was only decades after his death that a rediscovery of his work began – initiated by his grandson Peter Kreitmeir and supported by the Exilarte Center of the mdw in collaboration with the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes.
Katja Kaiser, archivist at the Exilarte Center, curates the program and leads through the evening.
Arabella Fenyves, soprano | Cuore Piano Trio | Eric Ziegelbauer, trumpet
Program:
Trio for violin, cello, and piano (1950) Suite for trumpet and piano (1945) Suite for trumpet and piano (1944) Sudeten Suite for violin, cello, and piano (1963/64) „Dort und Hier“ for soprano, violin, cello, and piano (1937)
As part of this recital, students from the renowned Guildhall School of Music, under the direction of pianist Marc Verter, will present the song oeuvre of the exiled composer Édouard Van Cleeff.
The concert is part of a cooperative project between the Guildhall School and the mdw’s Exilarte Center with the aim of creating the first scholarly edition of his songs and making his music accessible to a new audience in both London and Vienna.
Although Van Cleeff celebrated successes in the 1930s – including the premiere and radio broadcast of his opera “Pancho” in Nice – little is known about his life today. He was expelled from Nice in 1943 and deported to French and later German camps. Thanks to the initiative of the American pianist Joy Schreier and the support of Renée Fleming, Van Cleeff’s musical legacy finally reached the Exilarte Center.
Marc Verter and students of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama London: Maud Niklas, soprano | Alexandre Allix, tenor | Mark Zang, piano | Sooyeon Baik, piano
Program:
Musical works by Édouard Rosario Van Cleef from the archive of the mdw’s Exilarte Center
Moderation:
Marc Verter, pianist, Guildhall School of Music & Drama London
On this concert evening, the mdw’s Exilarte Center dedicates itself to the impressive string sextet by the Austrian composer Marcel Tyberg (1893-1944).
Gerold Gruber will lead through the program and place the work in its musical and historical context.
Tyberg, originally from Vienna, later lived and worked as an organist and conductor in Abbazia (now Opatija, Croatia). Despite growing repression under National Socialism, he continued to compose and gave his musical manuscripts to a friend – shortly before he was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and murdered there. His music, long lost, is now experiencing a belated rediscovery. Alongside symphonies and sacred music, the string sextet, now performed in its entirety for the first time in Vienna, is one of his central chamber music works.
Erich Zeisl (1905-1959) is one of those displaced Viennese composers whose works have returned to contemporary musical consciousness thanks to the achievements of exile music research and have found their way into the current canon of literature. Born in Leopoldstadt in 1905, Zeisl was enrolled as a highly talented teenager at the then Academy of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (now the mdw) in 1920/21. It is therefore an important concern of the Exilarte Center to honor this composer, who was so closely associated with Vienna and died in Los Angeles, with an exhibition.
Zeisl put his signature to his fate in Austria with the song “Komm süßer Tod”: composed in January 1938 and premiered in Vienna’s Ehrbarsaal in February of that year, it was the last song in the German language to end a flourishing career – shattered by the rise of National Socialism and the Anschluss that immediately followed in March 1938. It is precisely this image of the clash of worlds – Zeisl’s origins, the Café Tegetthoff, were soon “Aryanized”, Zeisl himself escaped to Paris under dramatic circumstances after the November pogrom of 1938 – that marks the entrance to an exhibition that aims to make the rupture of exile into a “before” and “after” tangible.
The public’s perception and reception of the works in this “before” and “after” were fundamentally different. The exhibition traces these moments of an exile biography, the narrative line follows the exile locations Paris, New York and Los Angeles.
While abroad, his style changed in the direction of “Jewish art music”, which is also the subject of the exhibition. Barbara Zeisl-Schoenberg, Zeisl’s daughter, and Randy Schoenberg, his grandson, have donated the entire correspondence (over 5,000 letters) and the musical estate to the archive of the mdw’s Exilarte Center.
In cooperation with Exilarte, radio klassik Stephansdom is dedicating the program Rubato to the Austrian composer Walter Bricht. His fate is exemplary for many musicians whose careers came to an abrupt end as a result of political persecution under National Socialism.
Walter Bricht (1904-1970) was a composer, pianist and music teacher. Born in Vienna, he was considered an exceptional musical talent. In 1938, he emigrated to the USA, where he taught as a professor and continued to compose. His oeuvre includes songs, chamber music and orchestral works.
In the program, Arabella Fenyves talks to one of his daughters, flautist Dana Higbee, about her father’s life and work. The program includes songs by Walter Bricht, performed by Arabella Fenyves (soprano) and David Hausknecht (piano).
Exilarte is committed to rediscovering and reappraising the biographies and works of expelled composers – Walter Bricht’s artistic legacy is also part of the Exilarte Center’s estate
The “Fremde Erde” music festival is a project of the VIVA LA CLASSICA! association in cooperation with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI), “Neubau erinnert”, the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG.Kultur) and the Exilarte Center of the mdw.
The festival is a tribute to the work and lives of composers whose works were banned under the Nazi regime and defamed as “degenerate art” – a term used at the time for all art forms that were considered undesirable in the Third Reich. VIVA LA CLASSICA! brings the music of Anita Bild, Henriëtte Bosmans, Erich Zeisl, Viktor Ullmann and many other composers back to life.
As a former student of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, the composer Philip Herschkowitz was one of the most sought-after private teachers of young musicians in the former Soviet Union after the war until the 1980s. Because of his Jewish origins, Herschkowitz, who was born in Romania, was expelled from Vienna by the Nazi regime. In Moscow, too, he continued to suffer from anti-Semitic threats and his works were frowned upon as “formalistic”. The focus of the concert is the musical work of Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova, both of whom belonged to the narrow circle of private students and whose compositions were on the regime’s notorious “black list” from 1979 onwards. The exceptional pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja could again be won as interpreter of this program, who will perform this evening together with singer Maacha Deubner, flutist Ulrike Anton, harpist Anna Verkholantseva, violist Marta Potulska and pianist and composer Alissa Firsova.
In an interview with Irene Suchy, the pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja and the composer Alissa Firsova will talk about their apprenticeship years with Philip Herschkowitz and the compositions on the evening’s program. The concert takes place in memory of the composer and Herschkowitz student, Dmitri Smirnov, who died of Covid-19 in 2020.
Works by: Elena Firsova, Dmitri Smirnov, Arnold Schönberg and Philip Herschkowitz
Performers: Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano) Ulrike Anton (flute) Maacha Deubner, (soprano) Alissa Firsova (piano) Anna Verkholantseva (harp) Marta Potulska (viola)
Moderation: Irene Suchy
When: May 16, 2023, 7 PM (EST) Where: Palais Ehrbar- Large Ehrbar Hall Mühlgasse 28, 1040 Vienna
