FESTIVAL | MaiMusik | 23.–25.05.2025

Age is just a number…

…and this has probably never been more true than this year: so many jubilees – some even 500 years old – and yet the music remains as fresh and lively as ever. We, the Department of Early Music at the mdw, will be performing in five special rooms in the heart of Vienna over three days in May and cordially invite you to enjoy all of these musical birthday celebrations with us.

On Friday, we’ll open the festival in the former Carmelite Church – a Baroque jewel in the second district – with a concert all about Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Italian composer, conductor and church musician, who is celebrating his 500th birthday this year.

On Saturday, our audience can look forward to two varied programs and a musical birthday celebration. In the afternoon, we take you back to the Viennese court of the 18th century and are guests in the Old Concert Hall – a monastic ballroom with a magnificent view of the monastery gardens and the Belvedere. The perfect place to enjoy rarely performed works by composers such as Fux, Bononcini and Ariosti. We dedicate the evening concert in the intimate but magnificent Bernardi Chapel to another jubilarian: Johann Sebastian Bach, who celebrates his 340th birthday this year.

On the third day, we return to Vienna and immerse ourselves in the world of Viennese classical music. The title of the concert is borrowed from a Divertimento teatrale by Antonio Salieri, which he composed for a spring festival commissioned by Emperor Joseph II. The crowning finale is the world premiere of the Oratorio di Santa Susanna by Carlo Agostino Badia: premiered in 1704 in the Ursuline monastery in Vienna, it will be performed again in 2025 in the church of St. Ursula.

We warmly welcome you to all concerts – on behalf of all students and teachers at our institute!

Eugène Michelangeli & Magdalena Hasibeder
Institute management