Author: Stephanie Jacobson

Live-stream concert of the US Embassy in Vienna in cooperation with the Exilarte Center

Saturday, March 13, 2021, 8 p.m. – now permanently available on YouTube

The American Embassy in Vienna, in cooperation with the Exilarte Center at the mdw and the Alte Schmiede in Vienna, invites you to a live-stream concert featuring women composers from the USA and Austria. The program features compositions by Jewish composers Ruth Schönthal and Vally Weigl, who were expelled by the Nazi regime and found a new home in the United States. Also works by the reputed American composer Nancy Van de Vate, who has been living in Vienna since many years, the Austrian composer Gabriele Proy, winner of the Music Award of the City of Vienna, and American composer Katherine Hoover, who was a professor at Manhattan School of Music for more than 15 years are part of this varied program

Ulrike Anton | Flute
Miyuki Schüssler | Piano
Armin Egger | Guitar

Live-stream concert from the Alte Schmiede, Saturday, March 13, 2021 – now permanently available on YouTube

Program

Ruth Schönthal (1924 – 2006): A Bird’s Song About…
for Flute and Piano

Nancy Van de Vate (b. 1930): Lento for Piano

Gabriele Proy (b. 1965): Azurit
for Solo Guitar

Vally Weigl (1894 – 1982): Bird of Life
for Solo Flute

Katherine Hoover (1937 – 2018): Caprice
for Flute and Guitar

Nancy Van de Vate (b. 1930): from Four Fantasy Pieces
for Flute and Piano
I. Slowly, with a timeless quality
II. Presto

Invited by the Alte Schmiede, one of the top addresses for contemporary music in Austria with a long tradition, the Exilarte Center at the mdw is presenting a live-stream concert that establishes a connection between composers who were forced into exile by the Nazi-regime and works which were created in the 21st century and deal with the issue of displacement and flight. Repression and censorship in the former USSR will also be addressed in this concert through a composition by Elena Firsova. Works by NS-expelled composers Ursula Mamlok, Ruth Schönthal, Alexandre Tansmann and Walter Bricht, who all found a second home in the USA, are juxtaposed with newly created compositions by Gabriele Proy (world premiere) and Helmut Jasbar.

Ulrike Anton | Flute 
Armin Egger | Guitar
Christine Roider | Cello
Miyuki Schüssler | Piano
Moderation: Gerold Gruber

Friday, March 5, 2021, 8 P.M. (CET)

Livestream: Alte Schmiede in Vienna

Program:

Ruth Schönthal: A Bird‘s Song About…
for Flute and Piano 

Helmut Jasbar: Fluchtstücke – Fugitive Pieces
for Flute, Cello and Piano

Ursula Mamlok: Variations
for Solo Flute 

Gabriele Proy: Hommage an Ursula Mamlok
for Flute and Cello (world premiere*)
*Commissioned by maezenatentum.at with the kind support of the Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Foundation

Alexandre Tansman: Hommage à Chopin
for Solo Guitar 

Elena Firsova: Otzvuki (Echoes), op. 59
for Flute and Guitar

Walter Bricht: Variations on an Old German Children Song, op. 40
for Flute, Cello and Piano 

Walter Bricht | Ursula Mamlok | Ruth Schönthal | Alexandre Tansman

Photos, livestream concert (March 5th, 2021)

Lew Nussimbaum, alias Essad Bey, alias Kurban Said: Border Crosser – Cosmopolitan – Jewish Muslim – Orientalist in Exile

Gregorij H. von Leitis, founding director of Elysium and winner of the New York Theater Club Prize and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, reads from the fantastic work of Lew Nussimbaum.

Introduction: Michael Lahr, Program Director of Elysium / Director The Lahr von Leitis Academy & Archive

In his short life, the Russian Jewish writer Lew Nussimbaum (1905 – 1942) came into contact with all the movements of the early 20th century: communism, fascism and National Socialism. Having fled to Berlin from Baku, which was gripped by the October Revolution, he converted to Islam there in 1922 and changed his name to Essad Bey. He began to write, especially for The Literary World by Willy Haas. His first book Oil and Blood in the Orient immediately became a bestseller. In rapid succession he wrote 13 other books, including biographies of Mohammed, Stalin and Nicholas II. In 1936 he published the novel Ali and Nino under the pseudonym Kurban Said, a Romeo and Juliet story set at the interface between Islam and Christianity. He fled from the Nazis to Vienna, and finally after the “Anschluss” to Italy, where he died of a rare disease in Positano in 1942.

The Lahr von Leitis archive has been part of the exil.arte Centre of the mdw since 2018.