The Third Year of exil.arte, and Second Year after its opening

With May 2019, exil.arte came into its third year, following its official public opening two years ago. I’ve already documented exil.arte with three previous article: The first was when we were given the… Continue reading

“Jewish Destiny” and the defiance of Richard Fuchs

“Jewish Destiny” is the English translation of “Jüdisches Schicksal”, which in turn was the title of a large oratorio written by Richard Fuchs. We’ll come to this work later, though I have already… Continue reading

THE MUSIC OF INNER-RETURN: PART 2

There is another important element that illustrates “inner return”: it’s the concept of “return”, when composers prominent as pre-war modernists return to old-fashioned concepts such as symphonies, sonatas and string quartets. Of these… Continue reading

Die Strudlhofstiege – the Strudlhof Steps

This entry represents an intermezzo between my articles on the music of exile and the music of “Inner return”. I’ve changed my Facebook profile picture to that of an urban stairwell. After 15… Continue reading

The Music of Inner Return: Part 1

Apologies are due for having neglected this blog for so many months.  There has been an inordinate amount of activity at the exil.arte Centre with acquisitions of several important estates, a symposium which… Continue reading

exil.arte: 2018 and what we’ve learned:

As the old year closes and a new one starts, I look back at the progress that our exil.arte Centre has made and find myself acknowledging that having come a long way, we… Continue reading

Reflections on Music and Politics at a Time of Transition

In the year 2018, as we reflect on 1918 and in Austria and the Czech Republic, on the year 1938, we encounter more and more references suggesting a repeat of Weimar Constitution Germany:… Continue reading

“Heimat Erde” – “Homeland Earth”: Four Lessons to Learn from The Loss of Local Composers

(Heimat Erde March by Robert Frey aka Freistadtl) Over the last months, the exil.arte archive has acquired an eclectic collection of composers and musicians, which I hope sets the scene for how the… Continue reading

Walter Bricht’s “Scattered Leaves” return to Vienna

(“Verwehte Blätter” – “Scattered Leaves” no. 8 Rasch; Fort Wayne Philharmonic, conductor Andrew Constantine: Toccata Classics) It seems incredible that the first time I wrote about the composer Walter Bricht was five years… Continue reading

Two Decades Since the Death of Berthold Goldschmidt

This posting follows an interview conducted with me at the Bregenz Festival in July 2018 where they presented Berthold Goldschmidt’s opera Beatrice Cenci. The close relationship I enjoyed with Bertold Goldschmidt has been… Continue reading