berlied Festival – Oskar Posa & Friends

berlied Festival

Oskar Posa & Friends 
Julien Van Mellaerts & Juliette Journaux

What can I expect?
This evening explores the expressive range of late Romantic and Expressionist art songs and is dedicated to the Jewish Viennese composer Oskar C. Posa (1873–1951)—a colleague of Zemlinsky and Schoenberg and a renowned art-song composer. 

Baritone Julien Van Mallaerts and pianist Juliette Journaux breathe new life into Posa’s songs and combine them with works by his contemporaries—including Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Alexander von Zemlinsky—who, like Posa, belonged to the Composers’ Association in Vienna and were denigrated as “degenerate music” during the Nazi era. 

Together, they paint a panorama of existential themes that shaped the war and interwar periods: longing, world-weariness, the hardships of city life, death, and war. The concert invites listeners to rediscover Posa’s song cycle, which is virtually unknown today—works of great harmonic density and dramatic expressiveness, in which voice and piano become equal narrators. 

Opening Act
Elise Morton & Rin Watanabe