Lecture Series – Vienna: City of Music and Dreams

Saul Lilienstein returns to Levine to present an 8-part series on the music, people, and lore of the iconic city or Vienna.

• Session 1: The Congress of Vienna: Beethoven and Schubert c. 1815 – October 3, 2018- Music will include Beethoven’s Symphony #7 and Archduke Trio, Schubert’s early songs.
• Session 2: Beethoven’s Final Years – the 1820s – November 7, 2018 – Excerpts from the 9th Symphony and Missa Solemnis.
• Session 3: Beethoven’s Ears: What Did He Hear and When Did He Stop Hearing It? – December 12, 2018 – Excerpts from the last String Quartets; writing through the silence.
• Session 4: Franz Schubert: A Provincial Life in the Growing Metropolis – February 6, 2019 – The composer and his circle, plus a selection of his finest songs and chamber music.
• Session 5: A Mid-Century Interlude: The History and Apotheosis of the Waltz – March 6, 2019 – Vienna dances to Josef Lanner, Johann Strauss – and his son.
• Session 6: Johannes Brahms Comes to Town – April 3, 2019 – Within a few years, this composer becomes a sonic symbol of the great city. Using music and architecture, we compare the building of the Ringstrasse and the building of symphonic construction in Brahms’s orchestra.
• Session 7: Gustav Mahler in Vienna: A New Symbol for the Undercurrent of Tension in Sigmund Freud’s City – May 1, 2019 – Excerpts from the music he wrote while Director of both the Opera and the Philharmonic Orchestra.
• Session 8: Before the Great War: Träume und Wirklichkeit (Dream and Reality) – June 5, 2019 – Operetta flourishes with sexual innuendos as the world teeters – and a musical crisis in tonality matches the tremors of a society on the brink. Music by Franz Lehar and Arnold Schoenberg.

Learn more at register at http://www.levinemusic.org/component/content/article/51-general/1244-saul-lilienstein-lectures