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 was 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, curated the program and led through the evening.
Peter Kreitmeir, grandson of Hans Winterberg, was honored by the team at the mdw’s Exile Art Center for his outstanding achievements!
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, presented the song oeuvre of the exiled composer Édouard Van Cleeff.
The concert was 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
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
These concerts mark the beginning of the cooperation with the American publishing house Schirmer/Wise Music, who will publish over 300 works from the archive of the Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna over the next years.
The Exilarte Center of the mdw will host and organize a symposium on the subject of Exile, Modernism and Hollywood on June 11 & 12, 2022 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna/Austria.
SYMPOSIUM EXILE, MODERNISM, and HOLLYWOOD
This symposium seeks to find the seeds to musical Modernism in the cinema of the 1930s and 1940s and evaluate its ultimate influence in film and absolute music. Hollywood became home for a vast diaspora of composers with the advent of sound cinema in the late 1920s. With the rise of Nazism and Bolshevism in Europe, the diaspora widened considerably, primarily by Austro-German exiles. Composers Hanns Eisler and Karol Rathaus had already rejected the late-Romanticism of Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, while other composers such as Ernst Toch, Hans Salter and Franz Waxman (Wachsmann) had taken the Romanticism template and modified it towards contemporary sound design.
A common experience that greatly shaped the careers of these composers was exile, which scholars have long recognized as a dialectic. It can lead to shattering experiences regarding identity, yet it can also open up new opportunities for expression and communication. In exploring connections between exile composers, Modernism, and Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1940s, this symposium examines what is surely one of the greatest cultural transfers in modern history, when European-trained composers who engaged with modernist ideas often struggled between the desire to achieve success in Hollywood while still being true to their art. Modernism in this symposium consists of a plurality of styles that Hollywood attracted, including but not limited to dodecaphony and atonality.
With the goal of examining the influence of Hollywood more broadly, we also welcome proposals about exile composers who benefited from the Hollywood film industry in other ways but did not necessarily write for film. This group would include such figures as Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Ernst Krenek, such as through commissions of works, teaching men and women in Hollywood, and developing social networks with members of the entertainment industry.
