The programme includes

Erich Wolfgang Korngold [1897 – 1957]
Suite to Shakespeares „Viel Lärmen um Nichts“, Op.11

Alban Berg [1885 – 1935]
Sieben frühe Lieder
Nacht (Text: Carl Hauptmann)
Schilflied (Text: Nikolaus Lenau)
Die Nachtigall (Text: Theodor Storm)
Traumgekrönt (Text: Rainer Maria Rilke)
Im Zimmer (Text: Johannes Schlaf)
Liebesode (Text: Otto Erich Hartleben)
Sommertage (Text: Paul Hohenberg)

*** Interval ***

Alexander von Zemlinsky [1871 – 1942]
Eine florentinische Tragödie [concert version]
Opera in one act; libretto after Oscar Wilde's "A Florentine Tragedy" in the German translation by Max Meyerfeld. Premiere on 30 January 1917 in Stuttgart

»Every time I’m in Vienna and walk past the Secession building, I feel the echo of this spirit of departure for modernism, the spirit of the early 20th century. A time associated with names such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Suddenly, culture was unleashed and inebriated, and art was the controlled space where a new, lustful gaze at the world was given reign.

That is the era we invite the audience to experience when we perform works written between 1905 and 1920 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. There are the 7 FRÜHE LIEDER by Alban Berg, the suite from VIEL LÄRM UM NICHTS by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and then the short opera EINE FLORENTINISCHE TRAGÖDIE by Alexander von Zemlinsky. These composers reached for brand-new harmonies and sonic colours, resulting in textures previously unknown. This music radiates a kind of erotomania, especially Zemlinsky. It is about affairs, love triangles, ecstasy. These were happening in the artists’ private lives as well: Alma Mahler, for example, first had a relationship with Klimt, then with Zemlinsky, but also had an affair with Kokoschka. Barriers were breaking down everywhere. You can feel this in the music too.

Artistic imagination of the time appears to be boundless. The music itself is a rodeo ride on a razorblade, now tonal and romantic, now atonal and modern, often oscillating between the two within one and the same work. This is the sound of a time of freedom!« (Marc Albrecht]