Protest has many faces—and today, as in the past, we encounter it in the most varied ways, be it as traffic interventions intended to call attention to climate change or through those frequent news reports that tell of the courageous demonstrators in Iran and highlight the life-threatening consequences that their acts of protest entail.

Artists’ 100th birthdays are eagerly embraced as opportunities to take a renewed deep dive into their oeuvres. In 2023, both on these pages and elsewhere, the mdw is devoting special attention to the Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti.

Viele von uns kennen das vielleicht: Wenn sich die ersten Rückenschmerzen im Alltag auftun, wird einem bewusst, dass man einfach nicht jünger wird und ein bisschen mehr Bewegung wahrscheinlich auch kein Fehler wäre.

When you think of film music, what melody comes to mind first? Ennio Morricone’s “Man with a Harmonica” from Once Upon a Time in the West, perhaps? Or the Star Wars theme, or even a film music classic by Erich Wolfgang Korngold?

The “language” of conductors consists of gestures and motions. For those who haven’t mastered them, they’re frequently intriguing to watch—and for all those who have, they represent just one aspect of those numerous important skills that are essential to communicating with musicians, an orchestra, or a choir.

When we get goosebumps at a concert, when our eyes tear up at the words we hear spoken onstage, or when we hold our breaths out of excitement during some other type of performance, what we’re experiencing are one-of-a-kind moments that can’t be reproduced in all their aspects—or, for that matter, repeated in exactly the same way.

After eighteen months of more alone-time than usual, including some long periods of purely digital contact with others, more than a few of us have ended up with a new take on how we feel about community and the presence of others.

Be it a concert for hospitalised cancer patients, a neighbourhood forum in a newly developed residential area, or making music together in a park: community outreach can take on all kinds of shapes.

One needn’t to look far to see how things like undue political influence, state interventions, economic conditions, national borders, and lots more can infringe upon human rights, whose enjoyment thus by no means goes without saying.

Art and research may not be things that one would directly associate with each other at first blush.