Gustav Klimt’s golden era in Vienna combines resonant images from Liszt, Mahler and Richard Strauss. The young woman from his expectation – is she the mysterious beauty that Arnold Schönberg describes in his early opus? And the Garden of Eden from the Tree of Life – is that the place where Elisabeth from Walter Brich’s Hesse setting has already been?
The atmospheric figures from Gustav Klimt’s works that adorn the new Tree of Life wing are the starting point for a journey through the ups and downs of love – the path through paradise!
The soprano Arabella Fenyves and the pianist David Hausknecht interpret the still unknown musical treasures of the exiled composer Walter Bricht, returning them to the Viennese art song repertoire.
Friday, April 5th, 2024, 7 p.m. Bösendorfer Salon Bösendorferstraße 12 | Canovagasse 4, 1010 Vienna
Dance band arrangements by members of the Auschwitz Men’s Orchestra played by musicians from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance under the baton of Oriol Sans.
Monday, May 13, 2024, 8 p.m. Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna Dorotheergasse 11 1010 Vienna
The ten short pieces on this program were arranged by Polish political prisoners who were members of the Auschwitz Orchestra. They used popular German hits of the 1930s and 40s – tangos, waltzes and foxtrots arranged and orchestrated for a dance band that played Sunday concerts for the Auschwitz garrison near the villa of Commandant Höss. The resulting manuscripts, which I began researching in May 2016, are stored in the collections department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Occasionally the prisoners signed these manuscripts with their prisoner number, e.g. B. Antoni Gargul, a viola player and Polish soldier (5665), or Maksymilian Piłat (5131), a bassoonist with a conservatory diploma who played in the orchestra of the State Opera and the Baltic Philharmonic in Gdansk after the war.
In the musical realization of these manuscripts for tonight’s performance, we retained the original instrumentation as much as possible and made only very small changes in the event of obvious errors. You hear these works, silent for over 70 years, as close as possible to how they sounded in 1942 or ’43 when they were performed at Auschwitz 1. The lines spoken by our singers are taken from testimonies and interviews with members of the Auschwitz Orchestra conducted in the post-war period.
We would like to thank the Copernicus Institute, the Exilarte Center, Dean David Gier, the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance, and the Global Tour Fund of the School of Music, Theater & Dance for making this concert possible.
Patricia Hall, 2020
Artists:
Oriol Sans, conductor
Musicians from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance
On the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, the Austrian Parliament will remember the victims of National Socialism on Friday, May 3, 2024. The event will be accompanied by music from the Exilarte Center and broadcast live on ORF 2.
Friday, May 3, 2024; 11:00 a.m. Parliament Austria – Federal Assembly Hall Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring 3 A-1017 Vienna
Opening words:
Wolfgang Sobotka, President of the National Council
Musical program:
Walter Arlen (1920-2023): Sonnet for violin and piano
Walter Bricht (1904-1970): Intermezzo from Four Pieces for piano, for the left hand (1933)
Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939): Eastern Jewish folk songs for a singing voice and piano
Artists:
Aleksandra Dimić, vocals Karla Križ, violin Anastasija Richter, piano
We are pleased to present the musical treasures from Exilarte Zentrum as well as the book “Music of Exile – The Untold Story of Composers Who Fled Hitler” (Yale University Press, 2023) by the renowned exile researcher and author Dr. Benjamin Michael Haas will now be presented in New York.
We would like to thank our supporters from the USA: Schirmer – Wise Music Group, American Society for Jewish Music, Hebrew Union College, Heller Museum, Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, among others.
Thursday, May 9, 2024, 7:00 p.m.Hebrew Union College 1 West 4th Street (at Broadway) New York, NY10012
Registration under: info@hmlf.org
Greeting:
Janie Press, Holocaust Music Lost & Found Gerold Gruber, founder of exil.arte and head of the Exilarte Center of the mdw
In conversation:
Benjamin Michael Haas, author John Mauceri, conductor
Interpreters:
Theodora Nestorova, soprano Josipa Bainac, mezzosoprano Ulrike Anton, flute Alex Fowler, violoncello David Hausknecht, piano
About the book:
What happens to a composer when persecution and exile mean that his true music no longer finds an audience? In the 1930s, composers and musicians began fleeing Hitler’s Germany to build new lives around the world. The process of exile was complex: although some of their works were celebrated, these composers had lost their familiar culture and were forced to confront xenophobia and a completely different creative terrain. Others, far less fortunate, found themselves in a kind of internal exile – composing under a ruthless dictatorship or in concentration camps and ghettos. Michael Haas sensitively records the experiences of this musical diaspora. Torn between cultures and traditions, these composers created music that was a synthesis of old and new worlds, some of which are core to today’s repertoire, while others have disappeared into the drawer. From the musicians who were interned in Great Britain as enemy aliens to the brilliant Hollywood compositions of Erich Wolfgang Korngold to the Brecht-inspired theater music of Kurt Weill, Haas shows how these musicians shaped the sound world of the 20th century – and offers a moving documentation of the war’s unpredictable impact on culture.
About the author:
Benjamin Michael Haas, PhD was a record producer and recording manager at Decca and Sony for many years, and was vice president of Sony Classical in NY in 1994/5. He is a multiple Grammy winner and initiated and directed the Decca recording series “Degenerate Music”. From 2002 to 2010 he worked at the Jewish Museum Vienna as a music curator. In 2013, Yale University Press published his book “Forbidden Music – the Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis.” From 2000 to 2015 he was Director of the Jewish Music Institute at the University of London and in 2015/16 Research Associate at University College London, School of Jewish and Hebrew Studies. Since 2016 he has been a senior researcher at the mdw’s Exilarte Center, which he co-founded.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Erich Zeisl, Rosy Wertheim and others.
Artists:
Julitta Dominika Walder, soprano
Mateusz Kasprzak-Łabudziński, violin
Piotr Lato, clarinet
Joanna Sochacka, piano
About the program:
The concert is a memorial to the lives and work of the composers whose works were banned under the Nazi regime and labeled “degenerate art” – a term that was then applied to all art forms banned by the Third Reich. Those affected were persecuted because of their origin, their faith, their gender or their sexual orientation. The ensemble VIVA LA CLASSICA! brings these almost forgotten works back to life in his concert program “Melancholy”. We would like to thank the Landstraße district, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland and the Jewish Museum of Galicia for their support.
The young woodwind quintet Windobona was founded in the summer of 2020 during the Angelika Prokopp Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic. Most members study at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and receive chamber music lessons from Gottfried Pokorny. They are active both nationally and internationally in chamber music and renowned orchestras, which contributes to valuable experience that they now use in the quintet. The ensemble regularly gives concerts throughout Austria, creates its own programs, performs at various events, works on commissioned compositions and plays at prestigious music festivals such as the Carinthian Summer. In 2022 they won 1st prize at the 4th International Cibulka Competition in Graz.
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
Monday, March 18, 2024, 7 p.m. Palais Ehrbar – small Ehrbar Saal Mühlgasse 28 1040 Vienna
Pianist Linda Leine and soprano Pia Davila have been working together steadily since fall 2014. This exciting journey began with the 2015 “Schubert and Modernism” competition in Graz, where the duo received third prize. Since then it has been playing throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Schwerin in 2016, the musicians won first prize in the Ostracized Music Competition – for both of them the beginning of working with music by ostracized composers. Since then, Linda Leine and Pia Davila have developed a wide repertoire, the core pieces of which can now be heard on the CD. There are various reasons why the musicians devote themselves particularly to this topic. In addition to the fantastic musical quality that the often unknown works and texts have, it is important to the two artists to make a social contribution through their profession. While Linda Leine learned the stories of her own Jewish family on her father’s side – her grandfather was interned in several German concentration camps and survived the Holocaust – for Pia Davila, cultivating memory for a democratic and peaceful life in the future is an important concern. For many years she was a member of the “Freundeskreis KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme e.V.” and her work as part of the guest student program for refugees at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater was honored with an invitation to the 2019 New Year’s reception with the Federal President at Bellevue Palace.
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
(c) Peter Kogoj
Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 7 p.m. Palais Ehrbar – small Ehrbar Saal Mühlgasse 28 1040 Vienna
“… my life only took on content when I began to seriously concentrate on music […] – I was completely on my own…” (Hugo Kauder)
The concert will feature music for string orchestra by Eric Zeisl, Hugo Kauder, Julius Bürger, Mieczysław Weinberg and Gideon Klein. You can also enjoy lively music from Fritz Kreisler and Anita Bild. Never-before-heard archive treasures await you.
The Alma Mahler Philharmonic stands up for composers who have been unjustly forgotten. Part of their commitment is the (re)discovery of the music of exiled composers, especially those who were expelled from Germany and Austria during National Socialism and whose music was banned.
The Alma Mahler Philharmonic is a non-profit chamber orchestra consisting of more than 30 young musical talents. The program will be conducted by Clara Bauer Wagsteiner, a graduate of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The pianist and musicologist Karin Wagner will guide you through the evening with background information and exciting details.
Inspired by Arnold Schönberg’s 150th birthday, celebrated around the world, the new exhibition at the mdw’s Exilarte Center sheds light on the social and cultural environment of the founder of the Second Viennese School. In particular, attention is paid to Alexander Zemlinsky, who taught Schönberg and introduced him to the Viennese music circles, and to Richard Hoffmann, who was a pupil of Schönberg and later became his assistant.
These three personalities, their professional, friendly and musical connections as well as their fates during the time of the Nazi regime are brought closer using life documents, photos and music manuscripts.
Countless other free spirits of the early 20th century from music, literature, fine arts and architecture as well as wealthy art lovers and patrons met for artistic exchange and lavish festivals in the artists’ colony planned by Josef Hoffmann in what was already the posh 19th district of Vienna. Most of them had Jewish roots and were persecuted by the Nazis. Many were able to emigrate, many died in the concentration camps.
Dazzling personalities such as Alma Mahler-Werfel, Gustav Mahler, Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, Hugo Henneberg, Sigmund Freud, Egon and Emmy Wellesz, Emil and Yella Hertzka, Richard Gerstl, Adolf Loos and Arnold Schönberg inspired one another in this Art Nouveau villa colony, which will be recreated as a model for the exhibition.
(c) Maria Noisternig
(c) Maria Noisternig
(c) Maria Noisternig
(c) Maria Noisternig
(c) Maria Noisternig
(c) Maria Noisternig
(c) Maria Noisternig
Arnold Schönberg was one of the first to emigrate in 1933, Richard Hoffmann in 1935 and Alexander Zemlinksy after the “Anschluss” in 1938… How much does the forced exile change a person, an artist in his work? In the exhibition we take a look at the respective oeuvre before and after fleeing into an uncertain future.
The score for one of Arnold Schönberg’s best-known works, A Survivor from Warsaw, written in the USA in 1947, is contextualised in the exhibition. Alexander Zemlinsky, who had previously written large symphonic works, has almost fallen silent as a result of the persecution: on display are the two song collections that he created in New York from 1938 (op. 27) and 1940 (without op.).
The question of what life in Europe would have been like for millions of people affected without Hitler’s National Socialist racial doctrine can no longer be answered and the loss of artistic potential in Europe as a result cannot be measured. We show the arbitrary bureaucracy with which Jews and people critical of the system were harassed. Documents such as Zemlinsky’s Reich Flight Tax Notice and Alien Registration Receipt Card with fingerprint can be seen in the original.
Zemlinsky and Schönberg managed to escape to the USA by transatlantic steamship, Richard Hoffmann emigrated to New Zealand. Other flight fates, paths to places of exile for women, men and children are reconstructed in the exhibition.
Many composers and musicians from the society around Zemlinsky, Schönberg and Hoffmann did not succeed in finding freedom. They lived underground (e.g. Josef Polnauer, Olga Novakovic and others) or were murdered by the Nazis (e.g. Schönberg’s family members or Schönberg’s friend and publisher Henri Hinrichsen).
“Triangle of the Viennese Tradition” is the title of the connection between three musicians who shared a similar fate as composers, educators and friends: they were of Jewish origin and therefore outcasts and exiles.
In Romanticism, the wanderer is a symbol of loneliness, the searching outsider and restlessness. Schubert took up this theme in numerous songs, and it also inspired him in his Wanderer Fantasy.
Hans Winterberg was also an outsider and preoccupied with his identity throughout his life, and it is only now, decades after his death, that he is being discovered as an important composer: born into a Jewish family, becoming a Czech citizen, married to a Catholic woman, in Theresienstadt Interned, emigrated to Germany and honored as a Sudeten German, his work has only recently become accessible. We will premiere his Fourth Piano Concerto and discuss its fascinating history in detail in a panel discussion before the concert.
Perhaps Beethoven’s most famous work, his Fifth Symphony, whose main motif is commonly associated with fate, is an ideal complement, leading from Dunkel to a hard-won victory.
