Present Music Goes Expressionist

Composer Olga Neuwirth. Photo courtesy of Present Music.

Present Music explores contemporary music while creating multi-dimensional community events. This Sunday evening, the ensemble will introduce a 1924 Expressionist silent film, The City Without Jews, a historic landmark in the centuries of struggle against antisemitism. Accomplished composer Olga Neuwirth has written a new score that breaks through the silence of the film.

The  restored film is one of few surviving Austrian Expressionist films. The Leo Baeck Institute offers a synopsis:

Filmed in 1924, it can be seen as a chilling premonition of the Holocaust—the premise is the political rise of the Christian Social Party, which orders all Jews to evacuate Austria. In the ensuing months, the sober reality of a society without Jews sets in, as cultural institutions close and cafes are replaced with beer halls. Eventually, the economy declines, and unemployment runs rampant. Intended originally as political satire, it became the subject of controversy and censorship, especially in conjunction with the rise of Nazism.

But the film was not quite as enlightened as that sounds. H.K. Breslauer, the director, backed away from the full power of the satirical novel by Hugo Bettauer, who called out antisemitism in early 20th Century Vienna. The city’s name was changed to Utopia. The film ends with the revelation that the story was all a dream. The lead antisemite realizes the error of his ways. All ends well.

The director created a film expected not to offend. The film was well received. The director and the film’s well-known stars shared in its success.

But history was not denied. Adolf Hitler, imprisoned in Germany for the failed coup d’etat by the nascent Nazi party in 1923, was released and led a growing party movement. The novel’s author, Bettauer, a well-known left-wing journalist and critic of the Viennese bourgeoisie, was murdered in 1925 by a crazed fanatic who assumed he was doing a public service.

The film was screened in Amsterdam in 1933 as a show of defiance against Nazi Germany. Then it disappeared from view.

Incomplete versions of the film re-emerged in the late 20th Century. A complete version was discovered in a Paris Flea market in 2015 and fully restored through a crowd-sourcing campaign. Neuwirth was commissioned to write the score for the restored film. The full film, with Neuwirth’s score, is available on YouTube, but with German titles. An incomplete version with English subtitles is also available. That version draws from Bela Bartok‘s Concerto for Orchestra for elements of the score, which makes little effort to supplement the story.

The Present Music concert features the full film with English titles and a live performance of the soundtrack. Yaniv Dinur, Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 2015-2023, will conduct the Present Music Ensemble.

Neuwirth has combined live music with an electronic track that allows her to represent crowd sounds and to effectively build the tension of the story, even working against the happy ending of the film. Present Music Co-Artistic director Eric Segnitz observes, “It’s a much different film with her score.”

Today, the film has a different impact. We view it through the lens of history, recognize prescient elements, and are reminded of recent headlines not even anticipated when this program was scheduled.

To close the evening, Present Music commissioned an ensemble setting to a Yiddish song with text by Woody Guthrie. Lisa Gutkin, the violinist with the Klezmatics, wrote the music for “Gonna Get Through This World,” which reflects not only Guthrie’s awareness of Jewish culture but the wartime era’s sense that life was fleeting. Aviya Kopelman, a leading Israeli composer, was commissioned to reimagine the song for the Present Music Ensemble. Donna Woodall, who won the WAMI (Wisconsin Area Music Industry) for Female Vocalist of the Year for 2023, will sing.

The film will be shown at the Milwaukee Arts Museum at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Windhover Hall. Tiered tickets may be purchased through the UW-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts Box Office. A streaming version of the evening will also be available.

A pre-talk at 6:00 p.m. will add context to the evening. Panelists include Lisa Silverman, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at UW-Milwaukee and author of Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars; Dinur, now Music Director of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra; and David Luhrssen, Film Critic and Managing Editor at shepherdexpress.com and author of Hammer of the Gods: Thule Society and Birth of Nazism as well as several books on film history.

Additionally, ticket holders have access to the Milwaukee Art Museum throughout the day, including the new exhibit, “Art, Life, Legacy: Northern European Paintings from the Collection of Isabel and Alfred Bader.”

Present Music has co-sponsored a series of events with nine community partners, featuring events before and after this evening.

After a year hiatus, Present Music will return to a Thanksgiving tradition with a celebration of community at Saint John’s Cathedral on Sunday, Nov. 19. Milwaukee composer Brian Packham offers a world premiere written especially for this occasion. Perennial favorite soprano Ariadne Greif will sing an Aaron Jay Kernis work, Simple Songs, and Raven Chacon will return. Chacon became the first Native American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, with a Present Music commission, Voiceless Mass, premiered at the Cathedral at the 2021 Thanksgiving Concert.

UPDATE: The panel discussion at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center has been canceled.