VOICES OF VIENNA to Spotlight Exiled Austrian Composers at Colburn

Colburn's Music Restored: The Ziering-Conlon Center for Exiled and Suppressed Composers will spotlight Austrian composers forced into exile in the United States with Voices of Vienna on October 30 featuring works by Hugo Kauder, Eric Zeisl, Ernst Toch, and Ernst Krenek. The performance will be preceded by a discussion with Music Restored Program Director Adam Millstein, The New Yorker writer Alex Ross, and author, research scholar, and Executive Director of the Hugo Kauder Society Barbara von Bechtelsheim.

Music Restored Program Director Adam Millstein will be joined by Colburn musicians and piano faculty Dominic Cheli for this performance. By bringing this music to life with urgency and care, this performance honors these composers who were silenced as “degenerate” under the Third Reich. The musical selections on this program, with the exception of Zeisl's Sonata for Violin and Piano “Brandeis,” were all written before the war and each composer's subsequent exile. 

Kauder was known for his traditional harmonic style, which opposed the atonal trend of his generation of composers. His String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, written as a wedding gift for his wife, is filled with pleasant melodies and follows the simple and concise style of Kauder's writing during this period. Following his exile to the United States after Germany's annexation of Austria, Kauder continued to compose and teach violin, music theory, and composition. 

Zeisl's deeply personal Sonata for Violin and Piano “Brandeis” follows his flight from Austria and the loss of his parents to the Nazi death camps. This profound work features three movements, all of which are completely different in character. A late arrival to Hollywood, Zeisl moved to Los Angeles in 1942. While he achieved some success in film music, his work was often uncredited, and he was never able to achieve the fame and success of early transplants, such as his friend Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Rather, Zeisl found his voice as an important composer of Jewish classical music in California.

Toch was a celebrated composer who was an important member of the European avant-garde before he was forced to flee Europe for the United States. While Toch enjoyed a second musical act after immigrating, these piano works, 3 Piano Pieces, Op. 32, Kleinstadtbilder (Echoes from a Small Town), and 3 Burlesken, Op. 31, come from his early period in Europe. An accomplished pianist himself, Toch wrote many compositions for the piano, with these early works offering a glimpse into his evolving musical language, which eventually came to encompass film music after his move to Hollywood.

Composed at the high point of Krenek's so-called neoromantic creative period, Triophantasie lost favor with its creator soon after the premiere. In the years after this work, Krenek changed compositional paths and adopted Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. The work served as a transition between this new phase and the snappy sound of his wildly popular opera Jonny spielt auf (“Jonny Plays On”), which had made him a target of the Nazi regime for its jazz elements and African-American protagonist. Regardless of Krenek's dislike of Triophantasie, the work continued to enjoy popularity among audiences and performers.