Schoenberg Institute to Survey ‘Artists in Exile’

At the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, a season-long survey of “Artists in Exile: From Nazi Germany to America” will get under way Oct. 17 with the opening of the exhibit, “From the Old World to the New World: Schoenberg’s Emigration to America.”

Concerts, lectures and seminars are part of the survey, continuing through June on the USC campus, home of the institute.

The subject deserves broad treatment, according to ASI director Leonard Stein, because “it colored and affected, for the rest of this century, the musical life, not only of Southern California, but of the entire American musical Establishment.”

It will also be addressed, through the concert year, in performances and extra musical events on series at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at the L.A. County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Stein says that it was LACMA’s initiative that “created the atmosphere” for building a season around historical artists-in-exile and artists-in-alienation issues.

Complementing the LACMA exhibition, “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany” (opening in February), both Monday Evening Concerts and the music section of the museum will present programs devoted to composers whose works were denounced in the 1930s by the Nazi government.

The American String Quartet will play quartets by Hindemith, Schoenberg, Viktor Ullman and Webern at its Feb. 27 performance at the museum.

And at the Monday Evening Concert of March 11, conductors Stein and Larry Rachleff will lead ensembles from USC, with vocal soloists Jennifer Trost and Steven Kimbrough, in a program listing Krenek’s “Durch die Nacht,” Schoenberg’s “Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene,” Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments, Kurt Weill’s “Von Tod im Wald” and songs by Hanns Eisler, Schoenberg, Franz Schreker and Alexander Zemlinsky.

A week later, on March 18, the Green Umbrella series at the Los Angeles Philharmonic will offer a Krenek program--part of the composer’s ongoing 90th birthday celebrations--at the Japan America Theatre.

And, for the orchestra’s subscription concerts of March 21-23, Lawrence Foster will lead the Philharmonic in a related program listing works by Krenek, Hindemith, Weill and Korngold.

At the Schoenberg Institute, the concert season begins Oct. 24 with a Krenek program to be performed by baritone Michael Ingham, pianists Delores Stevens and Charlotte Zelka and oboist Larry Timm.

The seminar series at the institute starts Nov. 7, when Mark DeVoto, professor of music at Tufts University, speaks on “Schoenberg and Judaism: The Harder Road.” On Jan. 22, Erhard Bahr, a professor of German at UCLA and a specialist in exile studies, discusses “Schoenberg’s Work in Exile and the Crisis of Modernism.”

The ASI seminar of March 5 offers “From Vienna to Auschwitz: The Musical and Spiritual Odyssey of Viktor Ullman,” with David Bloch, director of the Terzin Music Memorial Project at the University of Tel Aviv (Terzin was the name given the Theresienstadt concentration camp where Ullman was a prisoner, and where he wrote much music). Bloch, a pianist, will also participate in a Music From Terzin concert at ASI, March 12. He will be joined by soprano Emilie Berendsen and by pianist Edith Kraus, a survivor of Terzin.

Closing this portion of the seminars, Albrecht Dumling, music critic of the Berlin Tagesspiegel will speak on “Entartete Musik: The Aryanization of Emotions.”

For ASI information: (213) 743-5362.

GRANTS: Out of 180 National Endowment for the Arts grants recently awarded to orchestras for operating support, seven symphonic organizations each received awards of $290,000--the highest amount granted. The major orchestras in Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York were the leading recipients in the fund, which totals $9.7 million. All of the grants must be matched.

At the same time, the NEA has announced its 1990 choral grants, a total of $490,000 to 32 of “America’s top choruses,” according to the NEA. In California, the grantees were: the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Pacific Chorale, Chanticleer, San Francisco Choral Artists, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Symphony Chorus and Valley Master Chorale of Northridge.

BRIEFLY: With support from Yamaha Corp. of America, the University of Redlands will produce, Oct. 13-14 on the Redlands campus, a New Sounds Music Festival built around the Prism Quartet--a saxophone and MIDI ensemble whose members are Reginald Borik, Matthew Levy, Timothy Miller and Michael Whitcombe. New and recent works by John Costa, Kevin Malone, Brad Ellis, Frank Ticheli and Michael Ruszczynski will be performed Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. . . . A Dvorak Sesquicentennial Festival and Conference, honoring the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Czech conductor, is scheduled in New Orleans Feb. 13-20.