Join us on Sunday, October 20th at 3:00 pm for a special film screening of Secret Song with Hilan Warshaw. Produced, directed and written by Hilan Warshaw, Secret Song tells the gripping true story behind a work of mysterious musical genius– weaving together dramatic reenactments, documentary, and vérité footage of legendary musicians Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet. Click HERE to register.
Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite for string quartet has long been hailed as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century music. But for decades, few suspected that behind this powerful music lies an explosive secret. In 1925 Berg, a habitual womanizer, fell passionately in love with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, a married woman living in Prague. Soon afterwards, Berg composed the Lyric Suite for string quartet, which he intended as an explicit musical portrayal of his love affair with Hanna. Berg explained the music’s secret meaning in a color-coded copy of the score that he annotated for Hanna, making clear that the main events of their romance are all vividly dramatized in the piece. But to the rest of the world—including his wife, Helene—Berg presented the piece as he wanted it to be seen: a purely abstract work of chamber music. Among the work’s secrets is that its last movement was originally conceived as a song about doomed love, set to a poem by Baudelaire.
SECRET SONG brings this tale to life as an innovative film narrative. At the heart of the film is a cinematic re-enactment of the love story hidden within the notes of the music, with the music itself as the soundtrack. The film also follows Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet on a voyage of discovery from Paris and Dublin to leading American concert stages, as they perform the work and record their first-ever CD of the piece (including a reconstruction of the original vocal part to the last movement)– digging ever deeper into the piece’s dark world and the troubling secrets of Berg’s life.
How does knowing about an artist’s life affect us as audiences and performers? Should an artist’s personal flaws impact our opinion of their work? These questions, never more timely than now, are brought vividly to life in this tale of musical genius, inspiration, and seduction.
HILAN WARSHAW is an Emmy Award-winning director and writer. He has produced and directed internationally broadcast films featuring some of today’s most prominent musical artists, including Wagner’s Jews (WDR/ARTE, PBS-WNET, Israel’s Channel 8, Deutsche Welle and others); Secret Song with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet (SVT, Medici TV, PBS-AllArts, Allegro HD, EuroArts); Through the Darkness: Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Gerstl (ORF, SVT, YLE, and Medici TV); My Boléro with Nathalie Stutzmann (PBS-GPB, Medici TV; 2024 Southeast Emmy winner, Best Arts/Entertainment Long Form); In the Key of Bach (PBS-GPB); In the Station (PBS-KCET); Honorable Mr. Morgenthau (premiere screenings in May 2024); the forthcoming Mahler in New York (SVT and others), and The Faces of Carmen. In addition to these films of his, Hilan’s other writing and video editing credits include cultural documentaries and specials broadcast on WDR/ARTE, NHK, PBS, and other international networks. He is currently developing a feature screenplay.
Since autumn 2020, Hilan has worked as video director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, directing acclaimed multi-camera concert captures released on-demand and broadcast on regional NBC and PBS. He writes and hosts Piece by Piece, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s video series exploring the stories behind musical masterworks. He is a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, and has served as a juror for the Emmy Awards and International Emmy Awards. He has produced and edited numerous video and documentary projects for organizations including Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera, League of American Orchestras, Fund for the City of New York, American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Warner Music, and Warner Classics among many others.
His research essays on film and Wagnerian opera have been published in anthologies from Cambridge University Press, McFarland Press, and Königshausen & Neumann and in periodicals including The Wagner Journal, and he has taught lecture and film production courses at Barnard College and Western Carolina University. He has been a lecturer and panelist at venues including London’s Barbican Centre, Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Arts, Yale University, Columbia University, Boston University, NYU’s Deutsches Haus, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Minnesota Opera, Wagner Society of New York, and the Morgan Library & Museum, among many others. Hilan’s other commissioned and published writing includes verse librettos for musical works by Dalit Warshaw and Lera Auerbach, and for Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals.”
He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. An experienced violinist and conductor, he studied orchestral conducting at Mannes College of Music and the Aspen Music School.
