Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor
Julian Johnson series consultant
Orchestral music, chamber concerts, study days, film, online resources and commissioned articles exploring the music and culture of Vienna between 1900 and 1935.
“Vienna in 1900 was a unique cultural melting pot, where musicians, philosophers, poets, painters and scientists met together in the city’s many cafés, and created works of art and science that changed the course of history.
I have always believed that the music of this period has a very special artistic significance; and I hope that you will join us to hear the music of Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg in the context of Klimt’s paintings, Josef Hoffmann’s tableware and Freud’s dreams.”
Esa-Pekka Salonen
“Re-hearing this extraordinarily rich music, against the backdrop of Vienna’s cultural history, draws out how inseparably the romantic and modern are woven together. In all the music of this series, a poignant sense of loss forms the counterpoint to a longing for the new.”
Julian Johnson
"In a unique project we are re-inventing the networks and paths from Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. The Wiener Konzerthaus, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa Pekka Salonen come together to explore the inspiration music had on the European cultural landscape of this time. The Wiener Konzerthaus, established during that time, has a living tradition in inspiring its audiences through the music presented. In this project it will become a catalyst for various institutions contributing to this project."
Bernhard Kerres, Vienna Konzerthaus
“Vienna in the fin-de-siecle, with its acutely felt tremours of social and political disintegration, proved one of the most fertile breeding grounds of our century’s a-historical culture. Its great intellectual innovators – in music and philosophy, in economics and architecture, and, of course, in psychoanalysis – all broke, more or less deliberately, their ties to the historical outlook central to the nineteenth century liberal culture in which they had been reared. “
Carl E Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture
