The academic year of 2020/21 marks the birth of the mdw’s Department of Early Music—and in the following conversation, department head Stefan Gottfried and deputy head Eugène Michelangeli speak about their approaches to historically informed performance and the initial projects of this new department.

For two years now, the mdw has been one of the first universities in Austria to use 100 % green power—which is just one among many examples of sustainable university management set by the initiative “green mdw”.

Conference attendance, lecture tours, guest lectureships: research is international and produces an enormous ecological footprint. So how can it be made to function in a more climate-friendly manner?

We’ve all probably got some Beethoven clichés and images of Beethoven (and his head) kicking around in our own heads. But in this jubilee year of 2020, we’re aiming our gazes far beyond the usual notions of this famous Viennese-by-choice: Just who was this pianist, composer, artist, human being?

Or: How do we THINK ABOUT BEETHOVEN when figuring out how to MEMORIALISE BEETHOVEN during this jubilee year?

The mdw’s 16th International Beethoven Piano Competition – just in time for the composer’s 250th birthday.

Since 2005, the violist Wei-Ya Lin (who has since also become an ethnomusicologist) and Johannes Kretz (a composer specialised in electronic sound production) have been paying regular visits to the Tao community.