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.

It was early in life that this passionate musician felt drawn to her parents’ piano—and today, she’s a frequently requested soloist, an enthusiastic continuo player, and a professor of harpsichord at the Institute of Early Music and Historical Performance Practice at the Anton Bruckner Private University of Upper Austria.

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.

A central performance practice-related concern is the employment of period instruments or appropriately made replicas thereof, the investigation and mastery of which brings us closer to the music created by those who originally played on them.