Featuring Viktor Ullmann’s Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornet Christoph Rilke: A Melodrama from the Concentration Camps.

Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) was a Silesian-born Austrian/Czech composer, conductor, and pianist. A student of Arnold Schönberg, he was an integral part of the classical music avant-garde of the interwar period. In 1942, he was deported to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt/Terezín. There, he completed a number of remarkable compositions, most famously the chamber opera The Emperor of Atlantis. The melodrama Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornet Christoph Rilke (The Chronicle of Love and Death of the Flagbearer Christoph Rilke), based on a text by Rainer Maria Rilke, was the last piece Ullmann composed before his deportation to Auschwitz where he was murdered on October 18, 1944.  

Philip & Christine Bohlman are on the faculty of the University of Chicago. He is Professor of Ethnomusicology and one of the world’s leading authorities on Jewish music. She is an acclaimed pianist and piano teacher.  

Location: Music Building Auditorium (Room 2100), 1114 W. Nevada St, Urbana

Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 7:30 pm