Now that I’ve finished Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften, I can plough ahead with Manfried Rauchensteiner’s magisterial history of Austria-Hungary in the First World War. I’ve got as far as the 12th Isonzo Offensive… Continue reading →

Thank goodness I didn’t read Marcl Reich-Ranicki’s demolition job of Musil’s 2000 page, incomplete novel – is that the right word? – The Man without Qualities. Everything Reich-Ranicki criticises about Musil’s monster is… Continue reading →

An Interview with me at the Jewish Music Institute’s Radio, based at London University. Selections featured in the interview are (in order): Franz Schreker’s opera ‘Die Gezeichneten’, followed by Jaromir Weinberger’s ‘Schwander the… Continue reading →

Few of the so-called ‘exiled composers’ were as controversial as Hanns Eisler. None since Wagner had written such copious and trenchant observations on society, politics and ethics in addition to writing about music.… Continue reading →

In nearly every book on Vienna’s fin de siècle, the only composers dealt with in depth, are Mahler and Schoenberg. It is, however, only a partial representation of what music was expressing at… Continue reading →

In the recent article on Egon Wellesz, I made a passing reference to the fact that there was already a page dealing with Eugenie Schwarzwald to be found as an earlier blog-entry. In… Continue reading →

„Toch! Sie sind ein Wahnsinniger! Aber Hindemith, was bilden Sie sich ein mit solchen Werken? Sie sind doch ein aufrichtiger Bürger!“ (‘Toch! You’re a madman! But Hindemith, what could you be thinking of, composing such… Continue reading →

Egon Wellesz was undoubtedly one of Vienna’s modernist masters, lost to the city and posterity after exile in 1938. He, along with Alban Berg and Anton Webern made up the original group of… Continue reading →

Being in Austria just as Conchita Wurst wins the Eurovision Song Contest throws up any number of issues. I didn’t watch – in fact, I have never watched a Euro-Vision song contest –… Continue reading →