Podcast from the Blaue Gans

Michael Fleischhacker is an Austrian journalist and is known to a wide audience as a TV presenter.

After working for the Viennese daily newspaper “Der Standard”, he joined the daily newspaper “Die Presse”, where he was editor-in-chief and managing director until 2012. In 2014, Fleischhacker joined the team of the Austrian private broadcaster ServusTV as TV presenter of Talk im Hangar-7. In his home office newsletter, Fleischhacker took a deliberately critical stance on the measures taken in connection with the COVID-19 crisis and commented on the reactions of the population with suspicion from the distance of an observer. In the Salon discussion, he took us into his “Corona universe”, shedding light on the quite violent reactions to his broadcasts and explaining the extent to which the virus has changed the political options for action in the future.

Wilfried Reiter is a consultant. He has been supporting managers and change processes in organizations for many years.

Many successful projects have resulted in the “Workshop for Transformation”, which he runs together with his wife Claudia Freund. He is an enthusiastic author, consultant and companion in times of change. Development processes, such as those currently required in many places, are his specialty. His conviction: People who feel valued are happy to cooperate. The cooperative nature of people and the solution potential of systems make value creation possible.

Andreas Gfrerer spoke to Wilfried Reiter about the effectiveness of systems, what is needed for change and what conditions must be met for change to succeed.

The lawyer and attorney Wilfried Haslauer has been in Salzburg state politics since 2004, initially as Deputy Governor and since 2013 as Governor of Salzburg.

Its departments include business and tourism, which are closely intertwined with the cultural sector. Salzburg is a global tourist brand that is essentially built on the pillars of “Mozart”, the “Salzburg Festival” and “World Cultural Heritage”, complemented by scenic beauty and Alpine recreational opportunities. However, tourism and major events are now among the problem children of the virologists, a circumstance that hits Salzburg particularly hard as an international tourist destination and as a location for culture and congresses. The consequences will be felt throughout the economy.

Andreas Gfrerer spoke to Wilfried Haslauer about his personal experience of the crisis, his vision for the future of the country and the possibilities for shaping politics.

Peter Lohmeyer is a German film and theater actor who is known to a wide audience.

He has been playing Death in Salzburg’s Jedermann on the stage in front of the cathedral for eight years, and this year he completed his 100th performance. During his time in Salzburg, he has been intensively involved not only with the city and its people, but also with his role on the cathedral square.

Andreas Gfrerer asked Peter Lohmeyer in Gänsehaut-Talk about how an actor views the new distancing rules and greeting rituals and which aspects of the crisis are causing him to reflect.

Claudia Freund is a counsellor and coach.

Together with her husband Wilfried Reiter, she runs the Werkstatt für Transformation in Bad Vöslau. Her courageous approach has made her an expert in entrepreneurial and personal change.

Andreas Gfrerer travelled to her with the intention of making himself available as a client and with the request to have a complementary consultation with him, as she is currently doing with many people who ask themselves the question: ‘What’s the next step?’ and end up in an either/or situation. Claudia Freund wants to be a companion and supporter in finding new paths or allowing them to emerge, with all the treasure of her many years of experience.

Tina Heine is a restaurateur, artistic director, lecturer, consultant and, above all, a gifted networker.

In addition to the conception, curation and production of cultural formats, she also holds lectures and seminars. She brings together like-minded people and those who think differently and awakens the desire to develop new things together or transform existing ones. With these processes, she creates spaces for special encounters and meaningful impulses for constructive cooperation. She is familiar to Salzburg residents as the artistic director of Jazz&The City. This summer, she was also responsible for the “ZWISCHENRÄUME” festival.

Andreas Gfrerer spoke to Tina Heine about improvisation as a cultural technique, about thinking “out of the box” and what we can learn from artists for our coexistence.

Christopher Dell is a Berlin urban music theorist and jazz vibraphonist.

He studied vibraphone, percussion and composition and worked as a freelance composer and musician, as well as a lecturer at the Darmstadt Academy of Music from 1992 to 2000. Dell has headed the “Institute for Improvisation Technology” in Berlin since 2000. From 2008 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2018, he held a deputy professorship for urban design theory at the Chair of Urban Design at HafenCity University Hamburg. Since 2017, Dell has been teaching urban design and urban renewal at the Berlin University of the Arts. In May 2012, he completed his doctorate at the University of Duisburg-Essen with the thesis “The improvising organization: Management after the end of plannability”.

Andreas Gfrerer – in a double feature with Tina Heine – asked Christopher Dell whether the trend of urbanization is now coming to a standstill and how we should imagine or – better – wish to live together in cities.

Elisabeth von Thadden is a German journalist, literary scholar and non-fiction author.

She says about herself: “I got into journalism via Goethe, ecology and the fall of ’89, first at the Wochenpost, then at the Berliner Zeitung and then in 1999, with two small children at the time, at the ZEIT in Hamburg. I am responsible for the philosophical pages of Sinn & Verstand in the features section. Since 2012, I have spent a month every year as a permanent fellow at the DFG Research Group on Post-Growth Societies at the University of Jena. Most recently, my book ‘Die berührungslose Gesellschaft’ (C.H.Beck) was published in fall 2018.”

In the column “What are you thinking about right now?”, she asks philosophers and sociologists about current affairs. Tina Heine and Andreas Gfrerer asked Elisabeth von Thadden this very question as part of the GÄNSEHAUT Salon.

Michael Kerbler is one of Austria’s most prominent broadcast journalists.

He worked for the ORF for almost 38 years in various roles. As host, he shaped the Ö1 series “Im Gespräch” for many years, which has been one of the most successful Ö1 programs for more than two and a half decades. Kerbler’s guests have included Václav Havel, Peter Handke, Olga Neuwirth, Günter Grass, Margarete Mitscherlich, Christoph Schlingensief, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Maja Haderlap, Martin Walser, Stephane Hessel, Saul Friedländer and the Dalai Lama.

On behalf of the Salzburg Festival, he moderated the “Jedermann Symposium” this year on the occasion of its 100th anniversary – and the equally long performance tradition of this play. Andreas Gfrerer invited Michael Kerbler to take a look back at these three events, which were dedicated to three allegories in Jedermann, namely money, death and love.

Josef Weghaupt is a baker.

He is not actually a baker, but a trained food technologist, but he is so successful with his organic sourdough bakery Joseph Brot that he stands for artisan quality when it comes to bread – and is happy to be called a baker. The center of his company, which now has five branches in Vienna, is in the Waldviertel, in Burgschleinitz. From there, he is now putting out feelers further afield and conducting market research in Salzburg to see how the Salzburgers accept his bread. He has found a home for his pop-up store in the Blaue Gans, where good ideas are at home. I’m curious to know what Josef thinks about the fact that Backhefe was sold out during the shutdown, what makes Josef Brot so successful and why it’s now time for him to think about expansion. So Josef, what happens now?

Dorit Ehlers has lived and worked as a freelance actress and theatre maker in Salzburg for twenty years.

In 2007, she and other artists founded the network for theatre and art projects ‘ohnetitel’, which develops interdisciplinary theatre in a wide variety of formats. Born in Hamburg, she uses her theatre craft to take the harbour all the way to the mountains and has embarked on an unconventional exploration of ships and longing with the artistic-theatrical concept ‘SHIP FICTION’, an idiosyncratic ‘cruise & cross voyage’, as she says, which also anchors in galleries, museums and libraries on its route.

The basic idea is based on the imagination, on the desire to play, which always leaves room for a serious interrogation and enquiry. Andreas Gfrerer understood this as an invitation to clarify with Dorit Ehlers the question of whether longing is the force that allows us to set off, or whether it perhaps even prevents us from setting off on an adventure.

Helga Rabl-Stadler was Festival President for 27 years.

The ‘Lioness of Salzburg’, as the conductor Franz Welser Möst called her, is a master of networking – and fundraising – she was able to bring more than 150 million euros to Salzburg for the Festival during her time in office. She has accompanied six artistic directors as president, most recently Markus Hinterhäuser, whose vision of making Salzburg the ‘epicentre of something special’ she also saw as her own mission.

At a soirée entitled ‘The world as a guest in Salzburg’ as part of the Eat&Meet festival on 11 May 2022, I spoke to Helga Rabl-Stadler at the Salzburg Marionette Theatre about her lack of talent for frustration, thorn pricks and hero’s journeys as well as her role as hostess of the world that comes to the city of Mozart this summer.

What should you not miss this festival summer? Andreas Gfrerer talks to classical music expert and Blaue Gans regular Thomas Rauchenwald about the 2023 Salzburg Festival programme in the Gänsehaut Salon. Together, they leaf through the programme and discuss which highlights are not to be missed. Part 1 looks at the Ouverture Spirituelle and the first week of the official programme in August.

What should you not miss this festival summer? Andreas Gfrerer talks to classical music expert and regular Blaue Gans guest Thomas Rauchenwald about the 2023 Salzburg Festival programme in the Gänsehaut Salon. Together, they leaf through the programme and discuss which highlights are not to be missed. In this episode, the two passionate Festival fans take a look at the programme from the 2nd week of August. They also reveal which other places you should see in the city of Salzburg.

The programme for the 2024 Salzburg Festival is officially out and now the question is: what should you definitely not miss? Andreas Gfrerer discusses with ‘Opernglas’ author Thomas Rauchenwald, himself a regular guest at the Blaue Gans and operator of the classical music blog
rauchenwald-classik.com, about the expected highlights of the 2024 festival season.

Personal details: Thomas Rauchenwald is a self-employed legal consultant specialising in labour law. But that’s just one facet of his personality: as a sideline, he writes for Opernglas and runs rauchenwald-classik.com, a highly readable classical music blog.

Since the age of 15, Thomas has devoted his free time almost exclusively to classical music. He has the mother of his best childhood friend to thank for the fact that he became a Wagnerian. During his studies in Vienna, the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Musikverein became his second living room and have remained so to this day.

Of course, Thomas Rauchenwald is a regular guest at the major festivals in Europe and is particularly fond of Salzburg, where he stays at the Blaue Gans, which, in addition to Thomas’ proven connoisseurship, was reason enough for me to invite him to our Gänsehautsalon for the second time to browse through the 2024 festival programme with me.

So Thomas Rauchenwald, what’s next for the Salzburg Festival?