91Èȱ¬

Donald Macleod presents a picture of the most exciting cultural city in the world in the early 1900s: home of Mahler, Schoenberg and Freud.

As part of World War I on the 91Èȱ¬, this week Radio 3 focuses on the European music scene in the years leading up to the First World War.
In the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, Vienna was the hub of the world's art, music and philosophy. Donald Macleod takes us through the key musical figures and works that made waves in pre-war Vienna, including Mahler, Korngold, Zemlinsky and the "Second Viennese School" of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, and explores the personal, musical and philosophical conflicts that tore it apart.

Donald begins the week at the dawn of the 20th century, with the 26-year old Schoenberg busily penning his early masterpiece for string sextet, Verklärte Nacht, before moving on to perhaps the last great work of the Romantic era, Gurrelieder. But the prodigy of Viennese new music circles is not Schoenberg, but his older colleague ? and future brother-in-law ? Alexander Zemlinsky, soon to be cruelly abandoned by the beautiful Alma Schindler ? the future Mrs Gustav Mahler. Meanwhile, a wide-eyed young man from the countryside, Anton von Webern, arrives in the metropolis and seeks out a teacher...