A discussion with Dagmar Abfalter, Karl-Gerhard Straßl, Walter Werzowa and Christoph Stuhlpfarrer of the approach to artificial intelligence tools at the mdw.

In late January of this year, conductor Marin Alsop was made an honorary member of our institution. With this act, the mdw recognised Alsop’s internationally outstanding achievements as an artist as well as her work to promote women conductors and support the musical education of children and adolescents.

For the current academic year of 2023/24, director Sarantos-Georgios Zervoulakos is teaching as a visiting professor of drama directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar—which is not the first time he’s returned to the institution where he originally studied. Then as now, what he values most of all about the Seminar is Max Reinhardt’s concept of an ensemble that allows actors and directors to “grow up” in an atmosphere of close interaction and mutual inspiration.

The loft conversion at the mdw Campus is now finished, providing enhanced energy efficiency and more space for mdw departments. On 13 October 2023, the mdw and the Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft (BIG), Austria’s federal property manager, celebrated the grand opening of the converted loft spaces at the mdw’s main campus on Anton-von-Webern-Platz.

Since this spring, the mdw has been cooperating actively with the Korean Cultural Center in Vienna’s 1st district. Sun Ok Lee—the Center’s artistic director and mdw alumna—speaks in the following about cultural similarities, the importance of self-management, and supporting young musicians.

Long in the illegitimate possession of the KHM and the mdw, restituted in 2019, and now officially back at the Department of Early Music: the 1810 Rosenberger fortepiano.

The #MeToo movement and especially last year’s debates in Austria regarding abuses of power on film sets have shifted a new, previously little-known job description into focus: that of “intimacy coordinator” (IC), for which EU-recognised training now exists.

At the beginning of the 2022/23 winter semester, the Dolby-certified Arthouse Cinema on the Future Art Lab’s ground floor finally opened its doors to the general public for the first time.

A conversation about music in the cinematic realm, communication, and royalties paid in tuna fish with the newly appointed film music professor Walter Werzowa, media composition and applied music professor Judit Varga, film directing student Wolf-Maximilian Liebich, and film editing graduate Barbara Seidler.

At the 2022 Reichenau Festival, Christian Berkel will make his debut as a stage director with a production of Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) involving Max Reinhardt Seminar students. A conversation on the existential life crisis of puberty, broken homes, and the power of theatre.