The “language” of conductors consists of gestures and motions. For those who haven’t mastered them, they’re frequently intriguing to watch—and for all those who have, they represent just one aspect of those numerous important skills that are essential to communicating with musicians, an orchestra, or a choir.
In October of last year, the Joseph Hellmesberger Department of String Instruments, Guitar and Harp in Music Education moved from its old location at Rennweg 8 to Metternichgasse 12. This new address, previously home to Film Academy Vienna, now offers all students and teaching staff ample space.
In the series “What do the arts have to do with the Earth’s climate?”, the “Green mdw” initiative is inviting concerned individuals to speak out on their personal approaches to this issue. Matthias Naske has served as Intendant of the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft and President of Wien Modern since 2013.
From 8 to 10 February 2022, the mdw bore witness to the 22nd edition of the International Competition of the Franz Josef Reinl Foundation.
With the final round of the 5th Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition, held from 1 to 4 February 2022, the Ludwig van Beethoven Department of Piano in Music Education manifested a strong signal of the mdw’s uninterrupted international presence despite the ongoing pandemic.
Looking beyond the Catholic realm, such as with interreligious projects like the musical setting of the Diary of Anne Frank by James Whitbourn, is a major concern of this enthusiastic church musician and organist. She’s looking to address diversity and provide motivation for new and exciting projects.
Community Outreach was one of the main ideas behind this dedicated conductor’s return to Asia after graduating from the mdw. He now works with formations including the Macao Youth Symphony Orchestra, offers various kinds of training, and designs educational programmes for the musical youth of his home country.
“Jump out of your concert seats, take off your jackets, and pick up your tickets at the box office!” I glance at the rickety kitchen chair beneath me, three pages of Zoom tiles before me, and strain to remember just where in the apartment I put the furniture with the red velvet cushions. In what kind of concert mentality have I landed, here? In one that’s been rethought.
The course offerings in Rhythmics at the Department of Music and Movement Education/Rhythmics and Music Physiology (MRM) are open to interested parties of all ages. In these courses, a joyful way of relating to music and movement, creative impulses for everyday life, and having fun being creative as a group all enjoy equal importance.
At the 2022 Reichenau Festival, Christian Berkel will make his debut as a stage director with a production of Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) involving Max Reinhardt Seminar students. A conversation on the existential life crisis of puberty, broken homes, and the power of theatre.
For several years, now, the Standing Conference on Actors’ Training (Ständige Konferenz Schauspielausbildung – SKS) has been organising central auditions for the German-speaking region’s acting schools. At these events, students from the current year’s graduating classes present themselves to specialist audiences with an eye to landing engagements at the region’s various theatres. In the following, students from the graduating class of 2022 provide us with some impressions of their whirlwind trip to Neuss, Berlin, and Munich for the graduate auditions known as the Absolvent_innen-Vorspiele.
“EINSITZEN – Conversations about Setting and Reflecting upon Contemporary Dramaturgies and their Residues” is an open discussion format, subject to the whims of the moment, that is organised as part of the mdw’s MAS programme Applied Dramaturgy in Music and Performing Arts. At irregular intervals, this series will bring before the microphone guests who hail from theatre, the fine arts, literature, philosophy, music, and other realms of life.
He does ask himself whether his story will really be of that much interest, says Enzo Brumm right at the beginning of our conversation. 25-year-old Brumm is an acting student in his fourth and final year of study at the Max Reinhardt seminar. As a teenager, he was in the youth club at the Ernst Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg, and he’s now returning there for a production—as a full-fledged actor in a production of Don Carlos.
When actors, directors, and producers meet, casting calls are frequently the reason. As was the case this time—with one difference: to ring in the new year, Avia Seeliger met with Ercan Karaçayli, Daniel Holzberg, and Lena Weiss to discuss the phenomenon of typecasting.
Film editors do their work in the background, and exactly what goes on in the editing suite is familiar to very few. It’s there, however, that a film’s content and message are refined and honed, and it’s editing and sound that render the images truly effective. Film Academy editing students Julia Willi and Philipp Mayer tell us about their studies, editing’s importance in film production, and the soft skills brought to bear by editors in their work.
“What can we expect when we watch your movies at the cinema?” was the first question that mdw Magazine had for the Film Academy alumni Clara Stern and Peter Hengl. We quickly found out: before the audience can expect anything of their films, they’ll first have to fulfil their makers’ expectations—which are quite high indeed.
This rich collection of essays, many of them incubated in the forum of the annual isaScience conference of the mdw, is essential (and open-access) reading.
To mark the hundredth birthday of the Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis, the mdw’s Department of Musicology and Performance Studies (IMI) and Special University Programme in Electroacoustic and Experimental Music (ELAK) have teamed up with the festival Wiener Festwochen to organise a symposium on Xenakis’s electroacoustic oeuvre that is scheduled to take place from 19 to 21 May 2022.
The MMRC lecture is an annual event of the Music and Minorities Research Center (MMRC). Due to the hybrid format in which this year’s event was held, the audience was able to participate both in the mdw’s Joseph Haydn-Saal and online via Zoom.
For those who’ve thus far heard music by Orlando di Lasso performed mainly as a cappella “vocal music”, Bernhard Rainer’s book presents an opportunity to discover some new aspects—such as how Lasso effectively staged music via its arrangement, instrumentation, and richly varied performance.
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