Category: Aktuell

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Concert Series ” Echo of the Unheard” | December 18th, 2025 | Shira Karmon & Paul Gulda

Posted on November 24, 2025 by - Aktuell, Concert Series " Echo of the Unheard", news, posts-en

Soprano Shira Karmon and pianist Paul Gulda present songs from their joint album Spirit of Hope (Gramola, 2021) as well as other works composed in exile from the Exilarte archive. The programme includes songs by Julius Bürger, Wilhelm Grosz, Szymon Laks, Viktor Ullmann and Kurt Weill.

The Israeli soprano has made guest appearances at the Komische Oper Berlin, the Opéra national du Rhin, the Schwetzinger Festspiele, Wien Modern and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, among others. In addition to her classical repertoire, she is deeply committed to Jewish music and performs internationally with programmes about exile and remembrance. Her albums Spirit of Hope, Little Cakewalk and Bei mir bistu sheyn (Gramola) have won numerous awards. Karmon is a prize winner of the 20th and 21st Century Song Competition organised by the Cultural Committee of German Business.

The Viennese pianist, composer and teacher Paul Gulda has been performing internationally as a soloist, chamber musician and improviser since the 1980s. He has worked with artists such as Zubin Mehta, Yehudi Menuhin, Martha Argerich and the Hagen Quartet. In addition to the classical repertoire, he is also involved in projects promoting cultural dialogue and Jewish musical tradition. Numerous CD recordings, most recently ‘Spirit of Hope’ (Gramola, 2021) and ‘Arpeggione’ (cpo, 2022). Gulda teaches at the Friedrich Gulda School of Music in Vienna.

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

Palais Ehrbar – Kleiner Ehrbar Saal
Mühlgasse 28
1040 Vienna

Admission free! / Registration here.

Contributors:

Shira Karmon, soprano | Paul Gulda, piano

Program:

Songs by Julius Bürger, Wilhelm Grosz, Szymon Laks, Viktor Ullmann and Kurt Weill

Concert Series ” Echo of the Unheard” | March 25th, 2026 | The Shoah Songbook

Posted on November 24, 2025 by - Aktuell, Concert Series " Echo of the Unheard", news, posts-en

The Shoah Songbook is an ongoing project by the Likht Ensemble that researches and performs music from the ghettos of World War II. The works revolve around themes such as spring, dreams, longing, and resistance, combining lyrical beauty with subtle irony and deeply moving truth. The program is complemented by scholarly lectures by Nate Ben-Horin and Jaclyn Grossman on vocal music from the estates of the Exile Art Center and on the work of exile composers in Canada.

The project is supported by the Canada Council for the Art.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2026 at 7:00 p.m

Palais Ehrbar – Kleiner Ehrbar Saal
Mühlgasse 28
1040 Vienna

Admission free! / Registration here.

Program:

Musical works from the archives of the Exilarte Center:
Walter Arlen, Wilhelm Grosz, Erich Zeisl, Hans Winterberg, Walter Bricht, and works by Julius Schloss

Performers:

Jaclyn Grossman – soprano | Nate Ben-Horin – piano

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/.