Literature and music. Delia Mayer reads Alma Mahler. Tonhalle Zurich 2026.

Delia Mayer: Lesung.

Theresa Pilsl: Sopran.

Hendrik Heilmann: Klavier.

Laurenz Lütteken: Einführung.

Gustav Mahler, Alma Mahler-Werfel, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Alban Berg u.a. Lieder für Sopran und Klavier.

Alma Mahler-Werfel Auszüge aus Erinnerungen, Briefen und Zeugnissen.

Textfassung Franz Willnauer.

Alma Mahler is as much a legend as a muse as she is as a man-eating monster. But behind this superficial image lies an independent artist and composer, which, especially in her life with Gustav Mahler, led to tensions, not least because of her antisemitism. Even before their wedding, she noted: "He thinks nothing of my art—a great deal of his—and I think nothing of his art and a great deal of mine. That's how it is!" All the more significant, then, are the few published compositions she created against his wishes. Among them, her songs stand out. Mahler scholar Franz Willnauer unearths treasures from the archive of her eventful life alongside Gustav Mahler, but also alongside the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, the painter and graphic artist Oskar Kokoschka, who commissioned a doll to her measurements after their separation, and the writer Franz Werfel. Five men, like five staves on which she composed her life.

Sunday, March 22, 2025, 11:15 a.m., Kleine Tonhalle