Esa-Pekka Salonen - conductor
Julian Johnson - series consultant

This unique nine month exploration of the music and culture of Vienna between 1900 and 1935 will feature orchestral concerts in 18 cities, chamber music, films, study days, a unique interactive online resource and a virtual Viennese café in Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.

“Vienna in 1900 was a unique cultural melting pot, where musicians, philosophers, poets, painters and scientists met together in the city’s many cafes, and created works of art and science that changed the course of history. I have always believed that the music of this period has a very special artistic significance; we are all looking forward to offering our audiences the chance to experience the music ofMahler, Schoenberg and Berg in the context of Klimt’s paintings, Josef Hoffmann’s tableware and Freud’s dreams.”
-Esa-Pekka Salonen

For more information and concert listings visit www.philharmonia.co.uk/vienna

Specialists in the music, art and science of the period have been brought together by Series Consultant Julian Johnson, Professor of Music at Royal Holloway College, University of London and a leading voice in the study of Viennese modernism. Writers and academics including Peter Vergo, Edward Timms, Simon Shaw-Miller, Jonathan Cross and Robert Vilain will be contributing to documentary films, writing newly commissioned articles and lecturing at Explore Vienna study days. Partnerships with, amongst others, the Belvedere Museumin Vienna, Tate Liverpool, the Arnold Schoenberg Center, the British Library, the Freud Museum and the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris will also allow a rich array of imagery, photographs, letters, scores and documents to be available online and in publications. Another major partner in the project is the Royal College of Music, which will be presenting a series of five eclectic chamber music programmes between February and October.

City of Dreams will also be animated and made accessible to audiences across the world through the most ambitious online interactive programme ever undertaken by the Orchestra’s award-winning digital projects team. The Philharmonia Orchestra already reachesmore than 2 million people worldwide each year through its Sound Exchange music education website, as well as through the Orchestra’s Online Download Shop, YouTube, video podcasts and film initiatives. At www.philharmonia.co.uk/vienna, visitors will be offered their own virtual Viennese coffee table, on which they can watch more than a dozen new documentary films on subjects from Schoenberg’s chess set to Time, Trams and Technology in early 20th century Vienna. From the same coffee table they can explore an interactive map of the city in 1900, browse an original copy of Der Sacrum magazine; stir their own steaming cup of virtual coffee; while sending virtual notes to their virtual friends - as well as browse for concerts, watch filmed programme notes, read articles and view photographs.

Meanwhile at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, from 26 February to 23 March, visitors will be able to eat and
drink real Viennese food in a “virtual Café Central Vienna". Lifesize video projections of the café - where philosophers, artists and thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, would gather to share their ideas in 1900 – will bring together old and new, tradition andmodernism. State-of-the-art touchscreens will allow people to browse the Orchestra’s web resources, while on City of Dreams concert evenings, the live café-style music of Lehar and Johann Strauss will prepare audience’s ears for the evolving soundworlds of Mahler, Schoenberg or Berg.