{"id":12520,"date":"2025-11-26T11:39:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T10:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/?p=12520"},"modified":"2025-11-26T11:39:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T10:39:33","slug":"schmidt-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/2025\/11\/26\/schmidt-happened\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Schmidt happened!"},"content":{"rendered":"The Franz Schmidt Organ Competition was first held in 2006 and has taken place every two years since then. Its initiator was the mdw organ professor Rudolf Scholz (1933\u20132012), who headed our university\u2019s Department of Keyboard Instruments. As a tireless advocate and promotor of Franz Schmidt\u2019s organ works, his ultimate intent was to help make Schmidt better known. Until 2014, the competition took place in Kitzb\u00fchel (with its second round in Hopfgarten). It moved to Vienna in 2016, since which time the mdw\u2014as a cooperating partner of the association Camerata Viennensis \u2013 Konzertvereinigung\u2014has served as its umbrella institution.<\/p>\n

Viewed internationally, the Schmidt Competition takes its place among a number of similar events that include an emphasis on specific composers (such as the Hermann Schroeder Competition in Trier, the Helmut Bornefeld Competition in Heidenheim, and others). Even so, it is and always has been Austria\u2019s only organ competition that aims to encompass a stylistically broad repertoire\u2014in contrast, for example, to the Paul Hofhaimer Competition in Innsbruck, which is devoted almost entirely to early music. The aforementioned stylistic breadth has repeatedly attracted highly qualified participants, as evidenced by its winners\u2019 further careers, and the overall field of contenders this year hailed from a total of 13 countries. This broad musical scope quite naturally has to be done justice by the instruments on which it is carried out, which was one of the reasons behind the competition\u2019s move to Vienna.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\u00a9 Clemens Kneringer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the 2025 edition, several elements were reconceived. To allow for more efficient conduct (and in keeping with an international trend), a preliminary video round was introduced. Based on the videos that were submitted, the jury selected a limited number of participants in early April who were then invited to the main round in September. It was quite evident how this motivated numerous organists to register, seeing as the preliminary round required them to prepare only part of the programme while enabling them to find out well in advance whether they\u2019d be permitted to participate in Vienna. What\u2019s more, this edition\u2019s call included a greater number of freely selected pieces and less obligatory repertoire. And finally, the fact that it was held at the Jesuitenkirche and the Schottenkirche as well as on the Franziskanerkirche\u2019s historical choir organ (1642) doubtless represented a further attraction for the participants.<\/p>\n

Organising an organ competition is a highly complex undertaking. As different as modern pianos may be in terms of the finer points of touch and intonation, one really is much like the other\u2014particularly where their overall handling is concerned. And at violin or flute competitions, for that matter, participants bring their own instruments to begin with. Organs, on the other hand, live where they live\u2014so participants get to know them just one or two days before a competition begins. It\u2019s only then that they can make decisions about registration\u2014meaning how they combine the available timbres represented by the stops on a given instrument. Getting acquainted with an instrument is even more important when that instrument is a historical organ. Certain notes at the bottom of the keyboard are \u201cmissing\u201d: where one normally finds the lowest F# and G#, for instance, one might instead hear D and E. It\u2019s hence the case that all participants need practice time on the various instruments, and this requires precise scheduling that takes prayer and service times at the respective churches into account. It\u2019s obvious that competitors\u2019 handling of such special conditions and their registration choices play a role in how their playing is evaluated, which means that\u2014unlike at violin or piano competitions\u2014there are several parameters that extend far beyond technical mastery and musical interpretation. Moreover, a work\u2019s historical background always needs to be considered: Could a timbre that one selects today even have existed in 1690? Or: For this piece from 1935, wouldn\u2019t one much rather have had to choose register X or Y?<\/p>\n

With this year\u2019s relaunch, the Franz Schmidt Competition now features more opportunities to choose from the repertoire. In such cases, the question of whether a freely chosen piece works well or less well on the respective instrument likewise affects how a participant is judged. And by the same token, the jurors\u2019 task has also grown more difficult in certain cases\u2014for when very different works are played, the participants become less comparable. One participant might play a piece of great technical difficulty that requires less registration, while the exact inverse might be true of a piece played by the next participant.<\/p>\n

The winners of the competition\u2019s 2025 edition are:<\/h5>\n

1st prize: <\/i>Susanne Werpechowski<\/b> (Austria)
\n2nd prize:<\/i> Christoph Prei\u00df <\/b>(Germany)
\n3rd prize:<\/i> Jan Kop\u0159iva<\/b> (Czech Republic)<\/p>\n

\"\"
\u00a9 Clemens Kneringer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vienna\u2019s Franz Schmidt Competition has done great things for Austria\u2019s visibility in the international organ scene, and its place in the world of competitions is well established\u2014a fact that will be confirmed all the more by its 10th edition in 2027.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Franz Schmidt Organ Competition was first held in 2006 and has taken place every two years since then. Its initiator was the mdw organ professor Rudolf Scholz (1933\u20132012), who headed our university\u2019s Department of Keyboard Instruments. As a tireless advocate and promotor of Franz Schmidt\u2019s organ works, his ultimate intent was to help make Schmidt better known.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":424,"featured_media":12523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1049,1618,1623],"class_list":["post-12520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-report","tag-1049","tag-2025-4","tag-schmidthappened"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12520"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12668,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12520\/revisions\/12668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}