For the 2024/25 winter semester, the Sounding Visions Award—conferred by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in cooperation with the mdw—has set out in search of exciting new concert formats.

The Danube Region extends from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, covering a total area of around 800,000 km². Its namesake, the Danube River, thus ties together a diverse series of landscapes as well as cultural spheres. The Danube has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for all manner of artistic output and a recurring motif inscribed on a multitude of musical works.

17 August of this year witnessed the 21st edition of Eurovision Young Musicians—the renowned competition for young classical musicians put on by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)—in Bodø, a European Capital of Culture in 2024. Leonhard Baumgartner, age 17, claimed victory for Austria with his outstanding performance of Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Minor.

isaScience 2023 is celebrating an anniversary: ten years of isaScience, organised by the mdw! This year’s conference on questions of togetherness and hence also looks inward at the isaScience community.

With the “mdw young research award”, our institution has become Austria’s only arts university to recognise outstanding pre-academic papers and diploma papers (authored by students of academic secondary schools and colleges for higher vocational education, respectively) on music-related topics. The first awards ceremony will take place in September 2023.

In the series “What do the arts have to do with the Earth’s climate?” the “Green mdw” initiative is inviting concerned individuals to speak out on their personal approaches to this issue. Katja Dor-Helmer completed a business degree at the Vienna University of Economics and Business with specialisations in business management and group pedagogy. She authored her diploma thesis on the subsidisation of the French film industry while studying abroad in Paris.

On 21 November, the Fritz Kreisler Department’s biggest event in 2022—the More Strings Festival—concluded after five days.