2020 marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of Carl Orff (10.7.1895-29.3.1982). His stage work "Carmina Burana" is internationally known as well as his approach to music education and the percussion instruments named after him. His concept of elementary music is about initiating creative music making from the beginning and thinking musical learning from improvisation.
Orff's 125th birthday, the 100th anniversary of Wilhelm Keller, and the 60th anniversary of the Orff Institute provide an opportunity in 2021 - one year late due to corona - to illuminate Carl Orff's pioneering work from an artistic and scholarly perspective.
With the takeover of the University of Theater and Cinematography Budapest by a foundation close to the government, a movement is beginning in Hungary that has long since become a European issue - the preservation of the autonomy of the university and education.
Since the digital revolution at the latest, we have been confronted with a new dimension of reality that fundamentally changes communication, consumer behavior, socialization processes, image culture and world view. A conversation with Elisabeth Schmirl about the current relevance of visual education.
On February 3, 2021, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and the Mozarteum University in Salzburg launched a unique program: a series of master classes to deepen the study of Baroque music, beginning in the summer of 2021.
The film LOST IN DIMENSIONS by pianist Róza Radnóti makes an attempt to find visually expressible events in music, aiming to give the audience an intense and complex experience by interpreting the second movement of the Piano Sonata in C major (KV 545) in an abstract, non-narrative way.
7 world premieres and all works composed by Mozart in 1791, the year of his death. This is the ambitious program that the newly founded Mozart Forum of the Mozarteum University has set itself for 2021, starting with a production of the opera "La clemenza di Tito," which will premiere on February 1 without an audience, but in a livestream.
Grenzklang is a project based in Tyrol and unique in the entire German-speaking region, which on the one hand offers children of Persian origin an opportunity to promote singing and music-making, while at the same time enabling a connection to their culture and being open to children of all nationalities as well as music of pluralistic cultures. On the other hand, Grenzklang is a practical training programme for future music teachers. This joint intercultural learning envisaged in the project ideally leads to an attitude of all participants, which is the basis for social progress and enables teaching and learning in diversity, equality and democracy. It thus functions as a model for further (music) pedagogical and intercultural offers. Synergy is an essential feature and Grenzklang contributes to strengthening the cultural identity of all participants.
At the Department of Scenography, under the direction of the filmmaker and video artist Alexander du Prel, numerous animated films have been created at the Mozarteum University. The special feature: classical animation techniques are combined with digital recording techniques, the individual images are drawn individually on paper in analog form and then digitally stitched together, so that the films retain the charm of traditional animation. There is no other university or college in the German-speaking world that still works with this technique.
For the winter semester 2020/2021, Maestro Ion Marin has been appointed to the Claudio Abbado Endowed Professorship, endowed by the Hans Gröber Foundation Vaduz. In addition to his work as Professor of Orchestral Conducting, he will assume the artistic direction of the Symphony Orchestra of the University Mozarteum Salzburg.
Judith Rubatscher, graduate of music education at the Mozarteum Innsbruck, was awarded a research prize by the Kanda Center of the University of Innsbruck for her ethnomusicological thesis "'Singen is a part vo unsam leben.' Die aktuelle Gesangspraxis der Schmiedeleut-I-Hutterer in Manitoba" (Supervisor: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Nußbaumer). Rubatscher dealt with the musical tradition of the Hutterites, a Tyrolean Anabaptist community from the 16th century, which today is only represented in North America.
Matthias Bartolomey has been professor of concert violoncello at the Mozarteum University since October - and he has a lot planned for the future, starting with a course on progressive playing techniques in addition to repertoire teaching, which combines his diverse chamber music and soloist experience with new, intuitive improvisational approaches.
