The new musical director of Vienna State Opera is one of the most sought-after conductors of his generation. He is engaged at the best opera houses, the most important festivals and at famous concert halls all over the world – his career progression reads like one long success story. But the Swiss conductor also speaks of the difficulties of starting out, the obstacles that had to be overcome and the important encounters, disappointments and moments of joy along the way. Based on her numerous conversations with Philippe Jordan, journalist Haide Tenner documents the conductor’s personal relationship to music and his work, and his gripping life story to date.

The for the first time deciphered personal notes by Alban Berg give a multilayer genre picture of the Viennese bourgeoisie after the turn of the century. Alban Berg was undoubtedly the master of the Viennese musical modernity. Herwig Knaus tabulated and deciphered thousands of notes and letter drafts of Berg’s unpublished works. This unique biography which offers a new and authentic view at the artist emerged out of it. The until now available sources that where sometimes heavily censured by his wife Helene Nahowski gave only a directed view at the composer. Many aspects of Alban Berg’s biography were left out: his difficulties with his own family and his lesbian sister, the economical troubles resulting from the war- and postwar period, his relation to women, collegues, and – seen in the background of the traditional Viennese anti-Semitism – his relation to his teacher Arnold Schönberg. Out of those unvarnished insights into Alban Berg’s private life not only a very vivid portrait of this musical rebel emerges but also an exciting genre picture of the period after the break-down of the Danube Monarchy.

When Werner Heisenberg first met Elisabeth Schumacher in 1937 he was 35 years old and had been a professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig for ten years. In 1932 he had received the Nobel Prize. But he wasn’t doing so well: He was lonely and the political situation and ensuing exodus of German scientists was a heavy weight on his chest. He was attacked as the “White Jew” because he taught Einstein’s theory of relativity. Only two weeks after meeting the couple got engaged, a few months later they were married. Shortly after the war broke out, Heisenberg was asked to join the “Uranium Project”, the German nuclear energy project – from then on he barely saw his young family for years. The exchange of letters shows his heartfelt efforts to share a life in spite of the many obstacles and large distance separating him from his family. The letters are supplemented with previously unpublished dairy entries from the last days of the war. It is the touching testimony of a time period where he sought to preserve a personal emotional retreat.