An event by the Joseph Hellmesberger Institute for String Instruments, Guitar and Harp in Music Education (designated as Alma Rosé Institute for String Instruments, Guitar and Harp in Music Education) under the overall direction of Bettina Schmitt in cooperation with Exilarte. Center for Persecuted Music and the Institute for Music and Movement Pedagogy/Rhythmics and Music Physiology.
Funded by the Gender|Queer|Diversity Call 2022 of the Gender_mdw platform
Friday, January 26, 2024; 6:30 p.m. Joseph Haydn – Hall mdw-Campus Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna
On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a concert with discussion will take place on the evening before, January 26, 2024 under the title “Erased!? Rediscovery of persecuted female composers during the time of the Nazi regime”. The concert will feature chamber music works by the Nazi regime. Composers Leni Alexander, Anita Bild, Henriette Bosmans, Ursula Mamlok, Ruth Schönthal, Germaine Tailleferre, Vally Weigl, Rosalie Marie Wertheim, who were expelled from the regime, were performed and were selected and rehearsed by project leader, violinist and conductor Bettina Schmitt. At the same time, rhythmic students interpret and movement pedagogy some of these works. In a conversation with the flautist and exile researcher Dr. Ulrike Anton, conducted by colleagues from exilarte, we talk about these rarely performed composers and their artistic work.
In conversation:
Dr. Ulrike Anton, Director of the Arnold Schoenberg Center Vienna Katja Kaiser, Exilarte Center of the mdw
We are pleased to receive the book “Music of Exile – The Untold Story of Composers Who Fled Hitler” (Yale University Press, 2023) by the renowned author and researcher of “exiled music” Dr. Benjamin Michael Haas to Vienna after a successful presentation in London.
Thursday, 11 January 2024, 6:30 pm Jewish Museum Vienna Dorotheergasse 11 1010Vienna
About the Book: What happens to a composer when persecution and exile means their true music no longer has an audience? In the 1930s, composers and musicians began to flee Hitler’s Germany to make new lives across the globe. The process of exile was complex: although some of their works were celebrated, these composers had lost their familiar cultures and were forced to navigate xenophobia as well as entirely different creative terrain. Others, far less fortunate, were 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 produced music that synthesized old and new worlds, some becoming core portions of today’s repertoire, some relegated to the desk drawer. Encompassing the musicians interned as enemy aliens in the United Kingdom, the brilliant Hollywood compositions of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and the Brecht-inspired theater music of Kurt Weill, Haas shows how these musicians shaped the twentieth-century soundscape—and offers a moving record of the incalculable effects of war on culture.
About Autor: Benjamin Michael Haas, PhD was for many years a recording producer with Decca and Sony. 1994/5 he was appointed Vice President of Sony Classical in NY. He has won a number of Grammys, initiated and led Decca’s recording series “Entartete Musik”. From 2002 – 2010, he worked as Music Curator at Vienna’s Jewish Museum. From 2000 – 2015 he was director at London University’s Jewish Music Institute and in 2015/16, he was a Research Associate at the University College London’s School of Jewish and Hebrew Studies. Since 2016 he has acted as Senior Researcher at mdw’s Exilarte Center, which he co-founded.
Piano trios are an important part of the compositional work of André Singer and Hans Winterberg. The planned concert evening will feature the two still largely unknown but musically fascinating trios, interpreted by pianist David Hausknecht, violinist Floris Willem and cellist Cristina Basili.
Tuesday, December 12, 2023, 7 p.m. Palais Ehrbar – small Ehrbar Saal Mühlgasse 28 1040 Vienna
An event in collaboration with Puskas International, Exilarte – Center for Persecuted Music, Boosey & Hawkes, Austrian-Czech Society, Czech Center Vienna and Czech Embassy in Vienna.
Jonathan Powell places Winterberg in the context of Czech piano music and builds a bridge between Czech and Viennese traditions of the 1920s and 30s. The highlight of the recital is the premiere of Winterberg’s 4th piano sonata. Afterwards, an international panel discussion will examine Winterberg’s biography, work and the rediscovery of his legacy against the background of the historical developments of the 20th century.
In conversation:
Petr Brod (journalist, Prague) Gerold Gruber (Exilarte Center, Vienna) Frank Harders-Wuthenow (Boosey & Hawkes, Berlin) Lubomir Spurný (Masaryk University, Brno)
The composer and pianist Hans (Hanuš) Winterberg, born in Prague in 1901, found his final resting place in Bad Tölz in 1991. Winterberg, a student of Alexander von Zemlinsky, was part of Czechoslovakia’s musical elite in the 1930s and was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on January 26, 1945 because of his Jewish descent. Winterberg’s fascinating oeuvre has only recently been rediscovered and published in a collaboration between the Exilarte Center of the mdw and the publishing house Boosey & Hawkes.
The internationally renowned English pianist Jonathan Powell plays a pioneering role in this Winterberg renaissance. The winner of the German Record Critics’ Prize in 2021 places Winterberg in the context of Czech piano music and builds a bridge between Czech and contemporary Viennese traditions. A highlight of the recital is the premiere of Winterberg’s 4th piano sonata.
Afterwards, a discussion will examine Winterberg’s biography, work and rediscovery of his legacy against the background of the historical developments of the 20th century.
Event in cooperation with the Bad Tölz Singing and Music School, Peter Puskas, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Czech Center Munich, Cultural Department for the Bohemian Countries in the Adalbert Stifter Association
The renowned duo – cellist Vida Vujic and pianist Sybilla Konstantinova – is dedicated to the cello sonatas of Walter Würzburger and Walter Bricht, whose papers are in the archives of the Exilarte Center
SPECIAL EVENTS as part of the ORF Long Night of Museums
1) “The songwriting of Erich Wolfgang Korngold”, lecture with music (start: 6:15 p.m.)
Opening: Gerold Gruber, head of the Exilarte Center
Kurt Arrer has been intensively involved with the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his father Julius Korngold for decades. He is considered an expert in the field of transferring Julius Korngold’s difficult-to-read script. The lecture by the contemporary historian Arrer will be dedicated to the composer’s songwriting. Accompanying the lecture, singersArabella Fenyves and Josipa Bainacwill interpret works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold with pianist David Hausknecht.
Every two years a competition takes place in Schwerin that is exclusively dedicated to ostracized music. Exilarte awards a special prize that gives the winners the opportunity to take part in a concert in Vienna. The excellent duo with Ruben Mirzoian (clarinet) and Philipp Thönes(piano) were particularly convincing. They will interpret works by Joseph Horovitz (who died in London last year) and Paul Hindemith, among others.
3) “Tif vi di Nakht” with Ethel Merhaut and friends (start: 10:00 p.m.)
While hits like “That only exists once” or “In der Bar zum Krokodil” became absolute box office hits in Austria and Germany, Yiddish songs like “Glik” and “Zog es mir nokh amol” caused sell-outs in New York in the 1930s theater halls. “Tif wie die Nacht”, named after a tango by Abraham Ellstein, spans a musical arc from Europe to America and connects the German-speaking and Yiddish music scenes of the golden 20s and roaring 30s. Together with her outstanding ensemble, Ethel Merhaut strolls virtuosically between chanson, jazz and swing and takes the audience into the golden era of film and entertainment music. Music by Richard Werner Heymann, Abraham Ellstein, Robert Stolz, Sholom Secunda. Texts by Molly Picon, Fritz Löhner-Beda, Peter Herz, Bella Meissel…
4) Quick tours through the exhibition (from 6:30 p.m.)
The life and work of the famous violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler are presented in the new exhibition at the Exilarte Center with pictures, sheet music, life and sound documents. When the National Socialists came to power in Germany, the star violinist’s performances were accompanied by disruptions and calls for a boycott due to his Jewish origins. His compositions were also no longer played. In September 1939 he immigrated to the USA, where he settled in New York with his wife Harriet.
ENTRY
Tickets can be purchased directly at the Exilarte Center!
Exilarte center of the mdw, Lothringerstraße 18 / 1st floor, 1030 Vienna
Free entry for children up to 12 years*Reduced tickets for schoolchildren, students, senior citizens, people with disabilities, military servants and Ö1 Club members. Please have relevant proof ready on site.
Under the patronage of the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in the Republic of Austria in cooperation with the Exilarte Center of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the ÖAW – Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Croatian Cultural Association in Vienna “Matica Hrvatska Beč” and Association Tonwerk – Forum for New Music
10 years of Croatia in the EU (2023) | 100th anniversary of the death of composer Dora Pejačević (2023) | Croatian Presidium IHRA (2023) | 150th birthday of Karl Kraus (2024) | 150th birthday of Arnold Schönberg (2024) | 150th birthday of Antun Gustav Matoš (2023)
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In the oeuvre of the Croatian composer Dora Pejačević (1885-1923), the composition Metamorphosis occupies a special place both because of its musical significance and because of the context in which it was created: the vocal work for alto, violin and organ or piano was based on verses by the Austrian writer and journalist Karl Kraus (1874-1936) in the spring of 1915 and was intended for the wedding of their mutual friend Sidonia Nádherný von Borutin, which did not take place. Kraus planned to perform the composition in Vienna in 1916, but due to the delay in the score and problems with the performers, the performance did not take place. Correspondence between Kraus and Nádherný recorded that Kraus showed the composition to Arnold Schönberg, who – despite his skepticism about a woman composer – praised the work and advocated its performance.
Metamorphosis by Dora Pejačević is one of the characteristic works of modernism; Schönberg particularly pointed out the interlude before the beginning of the text “Today is Spring”. Encountering Kraus’ poetry was obviously stimulating for Dora Pejačević’s departure from traditional patterns and periodic form towards a freer flow of musical phrases and expressive harmonies.
The symposium is part of the three-year research project “Musicians in Exile from Nazi Germany and Austria and their Role in the Development of Musical Life in Iceland, 1935-1974”. Gerold Gruber and Josipa Bainac Hausknecht gave the lecture “Art Creates Awareness: Estates of the Exilarte Center Vienna”.
Symposium Speaker G. Gruber, A. Ingolfsson, A. Dümling
Opening with Grazer University Choir, conducted by F. M. Herzog
Gerold Gruber with family Urbancic
Gerold Gruber visiting the grave of Victor und Melitta Urbancic
In Reykjavik, Gerold Gruber visited the family of the Icelandic exile composer Victor Urbancic, who was born in Vienna in 1903. He studied composition, conducting and musicology at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna (today’s mdw). Already during his studies he worked as a conductor for incidental music at the Theater in der Josefstadt. From 1926 to 1933 he worked as a solo répétiteur, operetta conductor and finally opera conductor at the Stadttheater Mainz. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Urbancic was already with Dr. Married Melitta Grunbaum. The family moved back to Austria. From 1934 Urbancic continued his teaching activities at the conservatory of the Musikverein für Steiermark in Graz. Just six months later he was appointed deputy director of the conservatory and quickly assumed an important position in Graz concert life. Around 1936, the Graz Conservatory in particular became a nucleus of the National Socialists’ “new ethnic music education”. After Hitler’s troops invaded Austria, the family was forced to flee. This is how Urbancic ended up in Iceland, where he was considered one of the pioneers of modern musical life.
Most of Victor Urbancic’s estate is located in Reykjavik. Sibyl Urbancic (the daughter of Victor Urbancic) will hand over her father’s estate, which is still in her Viennese apartment, to the Exilarte Zentrum.
