This concert takes you right into the musical and personal network of the Second Wiener School: The Violin Concerto by Alban Berg is one of the few concerts of the 20th century, which is part of the standard repertoire worldwide. It became famous not least because of his touching biographical background: Behind the "angel" whose memory Berg dedicated his concert to, hides Manon Gropius - the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius - who died in 1935 at the young age of 18 years. The Artists Arabella Steinbacher is a leading German violinist of our time. She performs regularly with the major orchestras of the world and perfoming with the Philhamonia Zürich for the first time under the direction of the distinguished American Robert Trevino.

Even Alexander von Zemlinsky's fantasy for orchestra Die Seefrau is biographically connected with Alma Mahler (then Schindler): It can be assumed that the unhappy love for Alma was a source of inspiration for Zemlinsky's music to the sad love story by Hans Christian Andersen. The work was first performed in 1905 with Pelléas et Mélisande by Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna. For a long time in the shadow of the avant-garde compositions of Zemlinsky's student Schönberg, this fascinating late Romantic tone poem was rediscovered in the 1980s and has meanwhile found its proper place in the repertoire.