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.
“… 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
