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Jewish Vienna on CD

Vienna at the turn of the 20th century was a at the cutting edge of artistic and musical creativity. The Vienna Secessionist movement, led by Gustav Klimt had, in equal measure, shocked and fascinated the art world. Composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Webern (the Second Viennese School) had burnished their romantic credentials, and launched a brave new 12 tone musical world that confounded and perplexed the public. This was a city with a sizeable and flourishing Jewish artistic community. Not just Schoenberg, but Mahler and Zemlinsky, and of course the wunderkind that was Eric Wolfgang Korngold. The transition from the late romantic world to modernism in Vienna created some extraordinary art and music, and the composers on this album were at the centre of this extraordinary firmament. This album brings together some of the composers of this age, including lesser-known names such as Josephine Winter, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1943, and Alfred Grünfeld, whose Klein Serenade is a real ear-worm of a tune. The Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No.10 in an arrangement for chamber orchestra forms the centrepiece of this delightful orchestral lieder recital from soprano Chen Reiss with the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich conducted by Daniel Grossmann.