Author: Stephanie Jacobson

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

FREE ADMISSION!
Registration at: musica-suprimata@gmx.de

© ORF Design, Hans Leitner

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 – Vienna’s lost son in exile”

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.