After over 100 years at Lothringerstraße 18, the Department of Piano (formerly the Department of Keyboard Instruments—i.e., piano, piano vocal accompaniment, harpsichord, and organ) has moved to the mdw Campus at Anton-von-Webern-Platz.

A new home for the oldest repertoire: with the establishment of the mdw’s 25th department, instrumentalists and singers now have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of historically informed performance more fully than ever before.

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?