The project VIVA LA CLASSICA! in collaboration with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) and Exilarte.
Evil during the time of the Third Reich had many dimensions. One of the ideas to ‘purify’ culture was to completely ban the music of many composers who, by the decision of the authorities, did not compose according to Nazi ideology, were of Jewish origin or belonged to other national minorities, were discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender, and whose legacy was literally called ‘degenerate art’.

Persecuted artists were forced to emigrate in order to survive and be able to continue creating. We would like to present and familiarise you with their music, which is often completely unknown, and thus make at least a small contribution to popularising it. We are particularly pleased that we have also been able to find works by women composers who were, in a way, doubly discriminated against. It is the mission and strength of us musicians-performers that we can breathe new life into these songs and save them from oblivion.

The title song “Out of the Dark” (based on a song by Vally Weigl) comes from the song cycle “Along the moving darkness” composed between 1965 and 1977.

I have sometimes been reluctant to tell people that I’m a composer because they would just look at me condescendingly, […] They think it is okay for women to be performers of other people’s works but not creative leaders such as composers or conductors. Very few women have gained the recognition they deserve in this sphere. It has taken quite some time and will take even more before we really come into our own.
(A quote by Lynn Grasberg. “Vally Weigl: Music’s Renaissance Woman”)

​​Our programme will present compositions by Vally Weigl, Josima Feldschuh, Henriëtte Bosmans, Vitezslava Kapralová, Rosa Wertheim, Ruth Schönthal, Walter Arlen, Mieczysław Wajnberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Their compositions were written in emotionally difficult circumstances, while on the run, in prison or in exile, accompanied by longing and melancholy, as well as a nostalgic look back at ‘lost’ Europe, their homeland.

Julitta Dominika Walder – soprano
Mateusz Kasprzak-Łabudziński – violin
Piotr Lato ╬ clarinet
Joanna Sochacka – piano
Elizaveta Kapustina – video installation

Free admission.