V064: Vienna: End of an Empire: Turn of the Century

A Granada Production, U-Matic (NTSC) (2 copies), color (1989), 54:00.

Written and presented by Bamber Gascoigne
Production executive: Peter Stevens
Associate producer: Caroline Speed
Directed by Robin Lough
Produced by Tony Cash

Further credits below.

Time Description
0:00 Austrian hills, folk festival in Tyrol
1:30 Ensemble performs Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G Major, First Movement
3:05 Train station in Vienna, tourists and immigrants arriving in Vienna
4:15 Ensemble continues
5:50 More about Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf; narrator on location at Wolf's summer home
7:30 Singer and pianist perform a Wolf Lied
8:55 More about Wolf and his mental decline, Mahler's return to Vienna, anti-Semitism in Vienna. Old-fashioned train travels through the Austrian countryside.
11:10 Narrator on location at the Vienna Staatsoper
12:05 Secession building, built the year after Mahler arrived in Vienna
13:20 Otto Wagner buildings around Vienna: train station, home, Postsparkasse
15:45 Ensemble performs Mahler's symphony No. 5 in C-sharp Minor, Second Movement
18:20 Klimt paintings: The Kiss, Beethoven frieze. Photo of Mahler in garden party at Carl Moll's villa. Mahler's association and marriage with Alma.
20:05 Ensemble performs Mahler's Kindertotenlieder
25:10 "End of Part One"
27:15 "Part Two": Footage of Vienna in the early 20th century
28:10 Freud's office, narrator discusses beginnings of psychoanalysis, evidence of cultural anxiety in multiple art forms
29:30 Horse-and-carriage parade in the Prater, outdoor market, popularity of Die lustige Witwe
30:30 Paintings by Egon Schiele starkly contrast with Lehár's appealing operetta melodies
31:50 Discussion of Mahler's attempts to win Salomé for the Vienna Court Opera and his defeat at the hands of the censors
33:00 Music from Salomé, related paintings by Klimt, Franz von Stuck, Aubrey Beardsley
34:35 Discussion of café scene in Vienna, painting of Café Griensteidl. Narrator speaks on location at Café Central and discusses its patrons.
36:15 Narrator discusses Schoenberg's compositional style, sextet performs Verklärte Nacht
40:15 Schoenberg's paintings found little public acceptance.
40:40 Narrator discusses difficulties Schoenberg experienced with his public, Skandalconzert
41:30 Mahler's activities before his death, Alma's patronage of new music
43:00 Beginning of modernism in architecture, Adolf Loos's designs. Narrator compares a Loos house from 1912 with the contemporary Pierrot lunaire
44:00 Performance of "Mondestrunken" from Pierrot
45:55 Footage from royal wedding in Vienna, 1912
46:30 Performance of "Der kranke Mond" from Pierrot
49:10 Kokoschka's painting "The Tempest" (1913), self-portrait of him with Alma Mahler
49:50 Café scene, narrator discusses Karl Kraus's career
50:40 Footage jusxtaposing WWI and the opening of the new Kaiser Wilhelm café in Vienna (both 1914)
52:00 Cemetery
52:20 Credits
53:40    
End

 

Credits
Felicity Lott, Soprano
Graham Johnson, Piano
Felicity Palmer, Soprano
Franz Schubert Quartet
Nash Ensemble