Das Genie und sein Interpret: Nikolaus Harnoncourt und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart im Dialog. Dieses Buch gibt Einblicke in die Überlegungen und die Praxis eines Interpreten, der wesentlich dazu beigetragen hat, die Werke Mozarts für den Hörer von heute neu zu erschließen.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Texts, speeches, and conversations offer interesting insights into the considerations and working methods of an interpreter who made major contributions to the liberation of Mozart’s works from time-related overlays in order to make them accessible to the contemporary listener. Harnoncourt explains his notion of an interpretation that does as much justice to a piece as possible. Taking his recent experiences with the works of Mozart for an example Harnoncourt shows their inherent complexity and dramatic tension. These Mozart-dialogues are embedded into an analysis of the state of culture in our times. Once more Harnoncourt stresses the eminent importance of the Arts in general and music in particular for the evolvement and perpetuation of human moral values. “A computer cannot make music, and it cannot love either.” The distinguished conductor was awarded the Kyoto Prize 2005 for his life-time achievements. “I am not one who agrees at first. I can only agree when I have considered the opposite point of view. I like to meet contradiction myself – I need someone who questions my thoughts. When I don’t have a partner, as a last resort there’s always a heated discussion with myself.” N.H.

An intriguing and fascinating story about the birth of the Red Cross and the beginning of the Habsburg Empire’s downfall.

On site where on June 24, 1859, the Battle of Solferino ended with the defeat of the Austrian army under Emperor Franz Joseph I. Here, the French troops led by Napoleon III, an ally of the Sardinian Kingdom, managed to pave the way for Italian unification. The renowned Austrian author Joseph Roth’s famous novel “Radetzky March” eternalized the small town of Solferino in a literary monument, while Henry Dunant’s first-hand report on the gruesome battle and the suffering of the wounded soldiers in its aftermath led to the founding of the International Red Cross and the adoption of the Geneva Convention. When Ulrich Ladurner found the diaries of his great-grandfather, a man from South-Tyrol who was drafted to join the fight by lot, he set out into a past unknown to him. The political and historical account of the author’s journey, which in the course of the story becomes a search for his personal history, leads us to the Italian region Lombardy, south of Lake Garda. Observations, conversations and research on site helped Ladurner in his quest to reconstruct historical events.

Those who want to understand the 60’s, have to understand Woodstock. This is the book about the legend, written by one of Germany’s best music editors.

“3 days of peace and music” it said on a red poster with a dove of peace painted on a stylized guitar. The newspaper advertisement that was placed all over the country at the same time was even more specific: “Just walk around for three days, without seeing skyscrapers or trafficlights. Let your kite fly, lie down in the sun. Prepare your meal on your own and breathe fresh air.” And the music: With Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Joan Baez and many others, this “Aquarian Exposition” was well-cast. And so it happened that on August 15th 1969 there were 400.000 to 500.000 people setting off to the Catskill Mountains. Traffic came to a standstill, the supply situation was awful, there was nothing, except for dope. New York’s Governor threatened to declare a state of emergency, the whole world was expecting a catastrophe. The hippie’s dream of love, peace, fraternity, ecstasy and transcendency came true for three whole days. There the counterculture had its last great celebration, in the face of Vietnam. Woodstock is the hippie movement’s legendary culmination and at the same time its geatest possible gathering.

Is the capital exhausting its own descendants? Where does economy navigate to and how can we change the heading?

Recent developments in economy make it clear: Farreaching changes in the neoliberal system are in process. So immensely farreaching that even the most dedicated supporters of the free market economy call the state to help and realize that their strategies have to be reconsidered. But not only did speculations on the stockmarket and fraud undermine neoliberalism. The causes for this crisis are rooted far deeper and the crucial question is this: What has to be changed in our economy and system of values to regain economical stability? Not only government support, but also the demand for transparency, for planning on a longterm basis and for accepting responsibility for our future have to be discussed, as well as a mechanism that does not load the taxpayer with the costs for imprudence and short-sightedness, but those who caused them. Klaus Woltron gave a well funded response to the financial crisis and suggests humane solutions: Because what economy needs are ethics and longterm thinking.

A freethinker’s philosophical and smart manifest.

Buddha went to the woods, Jesus to the desert and Mohammed crouched down in a cave in order to carve a name to themselves. So, what does Adolf Holl do? At the hair dresser’s he links philosophy and literature with spiritual intellectual history only to find his way back to a profane lifestyle. With “How To Found A Religion” the freethinker Adolf Holl drew up a manifesto. An essential, profound and affectionate one. Intending to found a religion, Holl takes a wander through the history of religions, asking “why” – why a profession of faith? The present day has sent the founders of our religions back to the desert and now a solution it is, what we need: a new religion! Adolf Holl asks questions and searches for the answers. Only one thing he is sure of: The suitable religion is still to be found. Ironically, funny as well as rich in content he describes his longing for a denomination that works and thus can be lived.

A slovakian elderly care nurse’s death and a story about the new Europe and its old boarders. \"I think that one can not let this horrifying story rest, and I am sure that others feel the same as I do.\" Elfriede Jelinek

“Everything started when I, an Austrian living in Slovakia, read about a Slovak who had been found dead in on of Austria’s rivers - naked.” The last time Denisa Soltísová was seen alive, she was wandering around in an austrian city; it was January the 19th 2008, at night , only wearing underwear. Days after this incident she was found – dead and naked. The 29-year-old woman was a collegegraduate, Slovak and worked round-the-clock as a elderly care nurse. The police closed the case: “Suicide”. Yet the autopsy, performed in Slovakia, showed traces of violence. It is 700 kilometres from Ratkovská Lehota, where Desisa lived, to the place she died. Two different worlds that are parted by 700 kilometres, linked only by commuting busses, full of nurses. Two different worlds in which Martin Leidenfrost tracked the traces of one of them who will never return to the other side of the borders.

History of theatre is the history of an excitement that doesn’t want to end.

Theatre without scandals? Unthinkable! From Aischylos’ “Orestie”, the excitement about what’s to be seen on stage is part of the incalculable and sometimes calculated attraction of theatre. Up to today, until Rolf Hochhuth’s “Stellvertreter” or Thomas Bernhard’s “Heldenplatz”, pieces and productions have consistently made scandals. They provoked, aroused, or simply disturbed the comfortable boredom; they revolutionised theatre or died away without any effect like the screams at the first tier; they came surprisingly and violently or were produced and played up by the media; because of political contents or aesthetic border crossings they made for outrage and distraction – and frequently a behaviour of the public that to date one thought to known only from beer tents. An unbeatable cultural report through the long and loud history of theatre scandals: with analyses of the phenomenon, with swansongs to an old tradition, with interviews and anecdotes, with critics and examples of stage works at which not only the doors banged.

"Die erste Bedingung, dass Du etwas in Dein Herz und Deinen Kopf bringst, ist, dass Du etwas in Deinen Magen bringst." Ludwig Feuerbach

The one who is thinking a lot has to eat a lot, too. One thing is for sure: A slow metabolism attests mental lazyness! “Primum vivere, deinde philosophare”: First living, then philosophy. Freely adapted from Schopenhauer, this book follows philosophers through everyday life, to the place where it is most surprising and tasteful: to the dinner table. Out of letters, diary entries and side chapters of their main opus, the favourite dishes and the often obscure dinner rituals of the great thinkers are reconstructed. We accompany them on their culinary journeys through Europe and watch how nutrition left its marks in their philosophy or even influenced it significantly. You think like Nietzsche? Then why not eat like he did! Invite for a dinner marked by your favourite philosopher and amuse yourself at his favourite music with funny culinary anecdotes. Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin, Ludwig Feuerbach, Immanuel Kant, Sören Kirkegaard, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, F. T. Marinetti, Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Jean Paul Satre, Arthur Schopenhauer.

Die erstmals entzifferten persönlichen Aufzeichnungen Alban Bergs offenbaren ein vielschichtiges Sittenbild des Wiener Großbürgertums nach der Jahrhundertwende.

The for the first time deciphered personal notes by Alban Berg give a multilayer genre picture of the Viennese bourgeoisie after the turn of the century. Alban Berg was undoubtedly the master of the Viennese musical modernity. Herwig Knaus tabulated and deciphered thousands of notes and letter drafts of Berg’s unpublished works. This unique biography which offers a new and authentic view at the artist emerged out of it. The until now available sources that where sometimes heavily censured by his wife Helene Nahowski gave only a directed view at the composer. Many aspects of Alban Berg’s biography were left out: his difficulties with his own family and his lesbian sister, the economical troubles resulting from the war- and postwar period, his relation to women, collegues, and – seen in the background of the traditional Viennese anti-Semitism – his relation to his teacher Arnold Schönberg. Out of those unvarnished insights into Alban Berg’s private life not only a very vivid portrait of this musical rebel emerges but also an exciting genre picture of the period after the break-down of the Danube Monarchy.

For many decades, and until his death in 1989, Thomas Bernhard was the dominating personality in Austrian contemporary literature. His literature is unthinkable without his environment. It is characteristically Austrian, and belongs firmly in the ranks of world literature. He was available and he was public as none of his colleagues were, while he was also considered to be a loner and unapproachable. Everyone talked about him, and yet he was unknown. Erika and Wieland Schmied are two of the few people privileged to experience Thomas Bernhard in private, as a neighbour and friend. Their image of Thomas Bernhard is built on the memories of innumerable encounters and shared experiences, and is documented with unrivalled completeness in hundreds of photographs. The photos, characterful and unsentimental in equal measure, give an insight into Bernhard's environment, the houses and landscapes in which he lived. However, they also convey an impression of the places he wrote about. In short, the authors have created a comprehensive overview of Thomas Bernhard's cosmos, pervaded throughout by his life and work.