The International Day of Provenance Research has been taking place annually on the second Wednesday in April since 2019. It’s an occasion for various activities ranging from lectures to guided tours of museums, collections, and libraries and on to the publication of scholarly essays in the blog Retour. 8 April of this year saw the mdw participate in this day’s observance for the first time, doing so with a dedicated event and the opening of the permanent exhibition Stolen Melodies – Provenance Research at the ub.mdw in the open stacks of the mdw’ University Library (ub.mdw).

That a seminar for acting and directing should be named for a founder who was seldom present at his own institution is a truly remarkable circumstance. Just why this is not a contradiction and just how Max Reinhardt managed to make precisely this acting school into one of the German-speaking region’s most illustrious can now be learned—along with numerous other intriguing details—from a new book by Peter Roessler.

Born in Lemberg (today’s Lviv, Ukraine) in 1896 to an assimilated Jewish family, Kremer grew up in Sarajevo until her father—an officer and civil servant employed by the Ministry of War—was transferred to Vienna in 1905. While religion played zero role in her family, education was highly valued: the children were permitted to pursue any avenue of training they desired. Kremer, like her sisters, received her first piano lessons from her mother. At age ten, she continued her pianistic training in a preparatory programme at what is now the mdw.

What if questions of social justice could take tangible shape in our own bodies such that we could discuss complex political issues without relying primarily on words? In an era in which disembodied content consumption continues to polarise much of the Western world, my PhD project explores a different mode of collective sense-making: a performative and educational musical theatre practice for adults not necessarily trained in either dance or music.

When looking beyond the piano’s 88 keys and approaching the instrument’s interior, which is often overlooked by pianists and traditionally more the domain of tuners and technicians, a rich sonic world opens up. Katharina Bleier’s Extended Piano Techniques is an extensive volume totalling nearly four hundred pages that offers a broad and well-structured reflection on non-conventional pianistic practices.

When people hear the term “music education”, their first association is frequently with a concrete practice: that of music teaching and musical learning in classrooms, at music schools, in workshops, or in work with people of various backgrounds and ages ranging all the way from kids and teens to seniors. Initially less present in their minds is the research accompanying this practice—research that analyses it, critically scrutinises it, and advances its development.

These days, playlists with titles like “Music About Suicidal Thoughts” are easy to find. It’s thus anything but a marginal topic that the book Musik und Suizidalität. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven sets out to tackle, thereby taking its place among a growing number of publications that scrutinise the effects had by music about suicidal fantasies, intentions, preparations, and acts both generally and on the phenomena that it addresses.

“Why exactly is the Akademietheater called the Akademietheater?” Is its name just an inexplicable relic of bygone times? Is it a former training facility of the Burgtheater? Or perhaps a one-time modernist refuge from the court theatres of the monarchy?