The mdw’s Church of St. Ursula can look back upon 350 years as an important location for (sacred) music in Vienna. Empress Dowager Eleonora Gonzaga, the widow of Emperor Ferdinand III, brought the Order of Saint Ursula to Vienna in 1660. A central concern of this order, one that they shared with the Jesuits, was to promote education. The small group of invited sisters, who arrived from Liège, first took up residence on Dorotheergasse before moving to Johannesgasse in 1663.

It was through the Exilarte Center that the passionate chamber musicians of the Ineo Quartet first came into contact with banned music. And today, string quartets by composers such as Julius Bürger and Hans Gál have become fixtures of their repertoire.

A fascination with different ethnicities and worlds of sound has accompanied Salah Ammo since the very beginning. And thanks to a new master’s degree programme at the mdw, this passionate Kurdish Syrian musician has been able to realise a long-held dream: to engage with the broad field of ethnomusicology as a researcher.

The upcoming 32nd edition of the tradition-steeped Vienna Days of Contemporary Piano Music, scheduled to take place at the mdw from 30 January to 3 February 2026, will feature Tristan Murail as a guest—reason enough to present a brief portrait of this intriguing composer.

In order to afford women composers a more visible presence in piano lessons, the Ludwig van Beethoven Department launched a three-phase project that links scholarship, artistic practice, and media visibility. The objective was to establish a more diverse repertoire in the realm of instrumental training.

It was in 1994 that Ališer Sijarić, a composing student at the Sarajevo Music Academy, received an mdw scholarship to continue his studies far off from the ongoing war. Now a well-regarded composer and educator, Sijarić is following in some illustrious footsteps as the dean of his Bosnian alma mater.

Michael Frischenschlager and Clemens Hellsberg speak with mdw Magazine about this once-in-a-century virtuoso and great humanist on the occasion of his 150th birthday in 2025.

Jan Jiracek von Arnim, who was appointed as the mdw’s youngest-ever professor of piano in 2001 and assumed artistic directorship of the International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna in 2011, talks about proper breathing, dancing lessons’ beneficial impact on music-making, and his ambivalent stance toward competitiveness in the arts.

In the recent practicum “Jazz in Austria” an introduction to important holdings at Viennese libraries was paired with a focus on artistic legacies and collections at the archives and libraries of the mdw.