Category: news

Concert Series ” Echo of the Unheard” | October 15th, 2025 | works by Hans Winterberg

Posted on May 20, 2025 by - Aktuell, Concert Series " Echo of the Unheard", news, posts-en

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.

Musicologist Katja Kaiser, researcher and music edition consultant at the Exilarte Center, curates the program and leads through the evening.

Wednesday, October 15th, 2025 at 7:00 p.m

Palais Ehrbar – Kleiner Ehrbar Saal
Mühlgasse 28
1040 Vienna

Admission free! / Registration here.

Contributors:

Arabella Fenyves, soprano | Cuore Piano Trio | n.n., 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)

Concert Series ” Echo of the Unheard” | November 13th, 2025 | works by Édouard Van Cleeff

Posted on May 20, 2025 by - Aktuell, Concert Series " Echo of the Unheard", news, posts-en

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.

Thursday, November 13th, 2025 at 7:00 p.m

Palais Ehrbar – Kleiner Ehrbar Saal
Mühlgasse 28
1040 Vienna

Admission free! / Registration here.

Contributors:

Marc Verter and students of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama London: Maud Nilas, soprano | Alexandre Allix, tenor | Mark Zang, piano | Sooeyon 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

Concert Series ” Echo of the Unheard” | December 18th, 2025 | works by Marcel Tyberg

Posted on May 20, 2025 by - Aktuell, Concert Series " Echo of the Unheard", news, posts-en

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.

Thursday, December 18th, 2025 at 7:00 p.m

Palais Ehrbar – Kleiner Ehrbar Saal
Mühlgasse 28
1040 Vienna

Admission free! / Registration here.

Contributors:

Wiktoria Borkowska, violin | Emil Geber, violin | Magdalena Rychetsky, viola | Nicholas Hughes, viola | Hannah Amann, cello | Felix Vermeirsch, cello

Program:

Marcel Tyberg: String Sextet in F minor

Moderation:

Gerold Gruber
Founder of exil.arte and head of the Exilarte Center

The exhibition “Eric Zeisl. Vienna’s Lost Son in Foreign Lands”

Posted on May 5, 2025 by - Aktuell, Featured, news, posts-en

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.

The exhibition catalog is published by Böhlau Verlag.

The duration of the exhibition is from 14.05. – 20.12.2025
Curator: Karin Wagner

Opening hours are:
Wednesday – Friday: 15:00 – 19:00
Saturday: 13:00 – 17:00

Closed in July & August and on public holidays.
Free admission!

Walter Bricht – musical portrait on radio klassik Stephansdom

Posted on March 26, 2025 by - Aktuell, news, Partnerships with Exilarte, posts-en

Broadcast on March 28, 2025, 11:00 a.m.

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

More information about the program at https://radioklassik.at/programm/sendeformate/archiv/1428/.

The Publication about the work and life of the Jewish composer “Julius Bürger – Composer-Conductor – Vocal Coach”

Posted on April 23, 2024 by - Featured, news, posts-en

The publication about the work and life of the Jewish composer “Julius Bürger – Composer – Conductor – Vocal Coach” has now been published by Böhlau Verlag!

Author: Ryan Hugh Ross
Editor: Gerold Gruber
Publisher: Böhlau Verlag Vienna
110 pp. / Language: English
Böhlau Verlag Vienna, 1st edition 2024

“JULIUS BÜRGER Composer – Conductor – Vocal Coach”

Bürger studied with Franz Schreker in Vienna and Berlin. On Bruno Walter’s recommendation, Bürger later moved to the Metropolitan Opera in New York as an assistant to Artur Bodanzky. In 1929 he became Otto Klemperer’s assistant at the Berlin Kroll Opera and returned to Vienna after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933. En route from London to Vienna in 1938, Bürger and his wife foresaw what was to come in Austria and left their luggage in Paris. In 1939 Bürger moved to America, where he worked again at the Metropolitan Opera in 1949 and began a close friendship with Dimitri Mitropoulos. His mother was shot on the way to Auschwitz, and five of his brothers were murdered in the concentration camp.

Julius Bürger’s life and work would be impossible without the care and commitment of his friend, attorney Ronald S. Pohl, Esq. lost to history. Through Pohl’s efforts, much of Bürger’s music was premiered in numerous concert performances in the early 1990s. Selected orchestral works by the composer were also recorded for commercial release, contributing to the composer’s rediscovery. After Bürger’s death in 1995, Pohl continued the preservation and promotion of the unpublished compositions until he placed the estate on permanent loan in the Exilarte Center of the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, in the same building where Bürger began his studies.

The estate includes Bürger’s compositions in the form of autograph manuscripts as well as a large collection of personal documents and papers, recordings, newspaper articles and photographs.

The publication was published in English by Böhlau Verlag.

The catalogue to the exhibition “Fritz Kreisler” has arrived!

Posted on August 21, 2023 by - Featured, news, posts-en

The catalogue to the exhibition: Fritz Kreisler – a cosmopolitan in exile. From child prodigy to ” King of Violonists”

The exhibition at the mdw’s Exilarte Center shows the different stages of life of one of the greatest violin virtuosos of the 20th century, whose success story started in Vienna and ended in New York. Fritz Kreisler was cosmopolitan on the one hand and affected by the fate of exiles on the other.

On the occasion of the 10th International Fritz Kreisler Violin Competition, which has been held at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna since 1979, the new exhibition of the Exilarte Center of the mdw was developed – to present the life and importance of Fritz Kreisler to the public.

After the Nazis had banned all of his performances and recordings due to his Jewish origins, he emigrated to the USA in September 1939 and became an American citizen in 1943. In addition to his spectacular successes from childhood to the end of his career, the exhibition sheds light on him as a Jew and exile. The exhibition also shows Kreisler’s philanthropic and charitable activities. Material newly discovered in the course of the research complements the difficult research situation.

Authors: 

Ulrike Anton 
Amy Biancolli 
Albrecht Dümling 
Gerold Gruber 
Michael Haas 
Nobuko Nakamura 
Matthias Schmidt 
Eric Wen

Editor:

Prof. Dr. Gerold Gruber (Chairman of the Exilarte Center)

Publisher: 

Verlag Böhlau

If you are interested in buying, please contact: info@exilarte.org

Concert Series “Echo of the Unheard” I May 16, 2023 I Elisabeth Leonskaja, Ulrike Anton and Alissa Firsova I – In the footsteps of students of Philip Herschkowitz and his students

Posted on April 2, 2023 by - Concert Series " Echo of the Unheard", Featured, International-en, news, posts-en

© Marco Borggreve

Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 7 PM (EST)
Palais Ehrbar- Large Ehrbar Hall
Mühlgasse 28, 1040 Vienna

Buy tickets here

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.

© Peter Kogoj

Dmitri Smirnov (©Alissa Firsova)
Elena Firsova (©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.

Philip Herschkowitz (©Viktor Suslin)

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

Buy tickets here

CD Presentation Hans Winterberg, Piano Music  June 9, 2022

Posted on March 22, 2022 by - Events at the Exilarte Center, Featured, news, Partnerships with Exilarte, posts-en

The Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in Cooperation with Toccata Classics.

The Theresienstadt composer Hans Winterberg (1901 – 1991) has only been known to the musical world for a few years. The Exilarte Center is largely responsible for the rediscovery of the composer and will publish a large number of compositions in cooperation with the publishing house Boosey & Hawkes over the next few years.

On her second CD with works by Hans Winterberg, the pianist Brigitte Helbig recorded the Toccata, the First Piano Sonata (1936), the Impressionistische Klavier-Suite, the Suite (1956) and Erinnerungen an Böhmen for Toccata Classics. This new CD will be presented on June 9, 2022 at 7:30 p.m. in the Franz Liszt Hall of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Prof. Dr. Gerold Gruber, chairman of the Exilarte Center, will guide the audience through this exciting evening, where Brigitte Helbig will interpret some of the works she has recorded. Furthermore, Peter Kreitmeir, grandson of Hans Winterberg, will speak about his numerous efforts supporting the work of his grandfather.

CD Presentation: Piano Music by Hans Winterberg (Volume Two), Toccata Classics

Thursday, June 9, 2022
7:30 p.m.
mdw –University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Lothringerstrasse 18
Franz Liszt-Saal (3rd floor)
1030 Vienna/Austria

Admission free!

Wearing an FFP2 mask during the event is recommended.

The Exilarte Center represents the mdw at the Long Night of Research I May 20, 2022

Posted on March 21, 2022 by - news, Partnerships with Exilarte, posts-en

Expelled, persecuted and banned by the Nazi regime – what musical estates are telling us…

On May 20, 2022, the Exilarte Center will represent the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with several events about the estate of Marta Eggerth and Jan Kiepura during the Long Night of Research.

The son of Jan Kiepura and Marta Eggerth, Marjan Kiepura, himself a pianist and artistic partner of his famous mother, will report on the fate and brilliant careers of his parents in an interview with Prof. Dr. Gerold Gruber (chairman of the Exilarte Center).

Historical film recordings and audio documents from Eggerth/Kiepura can also be viewed and listened to during the event.

In addition, there will be regular guided tours through the exhibition of the Exilarte Center “My Song For You – Marta Eggerth and Jan Kiepura Between Two Worlds”.

The exhibition shows the stage and film careers as well as the musical heritage of these two famous singers. After the so-called Austrian “Anschluss” in 1938, they were forced to turn their backs on Vienna, which the Hungarian soprano and the Polish tenor had initially chosen as their new home. Through scientific research on this important estate, it has also been possible to draw attention to numerous other fates of friends and colleagues of Marta Eggerth and Jan Kiepura who were persecuted or murdered by the Nazi regime.

Long Night of Research, May 20, 2022, 5 – 11 p.m.

From 5:30 p.m., Exilarte Center (1st floor)
Short tours through the exhibition “My Song For You – Marta Eggerth and Jan Kiepura Between Two Worlds” including trivia on the content of the exhibition

7 p.m., Franz Liszt Hall (3rd floor)
Opening: video greeting from Ulrike Sych, rector of the mdw
Marjan Kiepura and his wife Jane Knox-Kiepura will report on the interesting life stories of Marta Eggerth end Jan Kiepura. In addition, historical film recordings and audio documents will be shown.

8 p.m., Franz Liszt Hall (3rd floor)
Q&A with Marjan Kiepura and Jane Knox-Kiepura

From 8:30 p.m., Exilarte Center (1st floor)
further short guided tours & trivia 

Free entry!

Recording of the event: https://mediathek.mdw.ac.at/lnf22

Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Lothringerstrasse 18 (1st floor)
1030 Vienna, Austria