The plot of Olivia Scheucher’s diploma production at the Max Reinhardt Seminar plays out amidst the world of the Austrian Armed Forces—which isn’t an alien environment for this graduate of the drama directing programme.

Stage director and Max Reinhardt seminar professor Anna Maria Krassnigg has loads of experience directing Shakespeare’s plays. But even for this experienced director, putting on Macbeth at the Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema is an adventure.

In this interview with mdw Magazine, she speaks about her experiences as a musician in healthcare and as a researcher studying the power of music to catalyse social change in hospitals and nursing homes for both patients and residents, but above all for the involved healthcare professionals, whom music helps to experience deeper humane connections in on-the-job interactions in the face of their everyday professional lives’ enormous demands.

Stärkung des Wohlbefindens, Ablenkung von Krankheit und Sorgen, Burnout-Prävention, Verminderung des Stress-Levels: Musik im Gesundheitsbereich hat vielfache Wirkungen. Die mdw ist durch ihre Lehrenden und Studierenden an diversen Musik- und Forschungsprojekten im Gesundheitsbereich beteiligt.

“It’s the source of my energy and existence—I wouldn’t ever want to do anything else, not even if I had a thousand options to choose from.” When Ira Süssenbach talks about her work as a stage director, her love of theatre is downright palpable. This fourth-year stage directing student at the Max Reinhardt Seminar spoke with mdw Magazine about her diploma production.

“What we see of the conductor at the rostrum is really just the tip of the iceberg. A deeper look reveals a veritable pyramid of competences made up of skills ranging from music to management,” says Alois Glaßner, head of the mdw’s Department of Conducting. mdw Magazine spoke with Glaßner about the University’s comprehensive training of conductors, the conducting programme as such, and the profession’s ongoing transformation as well as the department’s own plans.

To mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Austria, the mdw joined forces with the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Lang Lang Foundation to offer a public master class with piano superstar Lang Lang.

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.

When studying abroad, students typically meet lots of new people from all over the world, explore their host institutions, get to know the cultural life of a new city, go on outings, go to parties … in short: they gather new and memorable impressions and experiences. Despite the pandemic, last year at the mdw featured lots of student mobility.