A City on Two Wheels
More and more Viennese are choosing to hop on a bike rather than use any other means of transport, according to a study by the City Council that came out this September. The number of cyclists in Austria’s capital has risen 40% over the past four years – a result primarily of government efforts to [...]
An Ode to Love and Longing
The spilt tears run down the windows that cover my heart, Tonight I will play without worrying, Tonight I heal my wounds singing songs, my brother, Why do we have to hate each other because somebody wants it? These struggles and successes, eloquently captured here by rapper Haris Alic, are still part of daily life [...]
The Truth About Being Modern
The Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna (RSO) was nearly sacked last year. Now they are securely and legally part of the ORF, with the express purpose, among other things, to play and record contemporary Austrian composers. But they are not leaning back, with a sigh of relief – pressure off, business as usual – as others [...]
Arigona Back in Austria
Arigona Zogaj (18) returned to Austria on Nov. 24 with her mother Nurije and her younger brother and sister Albin (11) and Albona (10), four months after the family had been deported to Kosovo. The return of the Zogajs marked the end of a three-year fight to stay in Austria, bringing them back to Frankenburg [...]
Getting Who You Deserve
We know that Mozart was a genius, but it is good to be reminded of it once in awhile. He wrote La finta giardiniera (The false garden maid) shortly before his nineteenth birthday, at a time when his father realized it was about time his son started doing something serious. The cute child prodigy was [...]
Viennale: Window Into the World
The Viennale, Austria’s most important film festival, is both a window into the world of film and a mirror of the world as seen by filmmakers. More than just a parade of names, facts and statistics – of who made what with whom and for how much – it is an opportunity for a predominantly [...]
Staging Haydn: A Pink Horror
Legend has it that L’isola disabitata (The Uninhabited Island, 1779) was Joseph Haydn’s own favorite opera. But the current production at the Kammeroper is a juvenile debunk of what Haydn, one would hope, had taken seriously. The music is lovely. The singing was great. But the staging is a pink horror of a teenage girl’s [...]
Immigration’s Uncivil Law
In the arrivals hall of the Vienna International Airport, Daniella and Dorentinya Komani smiled and waved into the camera. Accompanied by their beaming father, Augustin, the 8-year-old twin girls set foot back in Austria on Oct. 21, back to the country they had grown up in, but had had to leave, despite their mother’s open [...]
‘Here and Now’: Wien Modern
Modern music is not composed for dancing or consumption in a “feel good” fashion but is to be perceived in a concentrated and contemplative manner, has said young Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud, born in Innsbruck in 1974. And whether yea or nay, there will be plenty of chances to hear new music in contemplative [...]
