“I have fond memories of the time when my collaboration with “Musica Juventutis” began. It was in the summer of 1995. I had said goodbye to my former field of work at the ORF regional studio in Vorarlberg and joined the main music department at the Vienna broadcasting center in Argentinierstraße. At that time, Dr. Andrea Seebohm was the head of the department, and she was also a member of the board of the association “Musica Juventutis,” which Dr. Norbert Brunner, a member of the board of directors of the Wiener Konzerthaus, had founded in 1983 and since then had also served as its secretary general. Andrea Seebohm, however, had no real contact person for Norbert Brunner at the ORF. Of course, she knew exactly my previous work for Ö1, so she thought she had found him. I was briefly instructed, and a few days later Dr. Brunner visited me at the Funkhaus. The conversation had only just begun, and already we were one heart and soul. Or to put it another way: Norbert Brunner was preaching to the choir. After all, presenting and promoting young musicians had always been one of my main ambitions in radio work. From then on, I supervised the concerts of Musica Juventutis both as an editor and as a recording supervisor, and I also had the appropriate broadcasting slot on Ö1: the music magazine “Intrada” on Friday mornings, which I had “invented” in 1993.

Norbert Brunner was a full-time dermatology specialist, but he was also a trained singer. And he could proudly say that he had been a student of the legendary bass-baritone Alfred Jerger (1889-1976). Brunner led “Musica Juventutis” in the style of an artistic director. He attentively followed the jury meetings in which those were selected who were to perform at the concerts in the Schubert Hall. And in this context, he did not shy away from artistic disputes with expert jurors. Time and again, he also commissioned the young artists to rehearse certain works and perform them in concert. These included, for example, Bela Bartók’s rarely played Piano Quintet opus 3, one of his youthful works (1903/04), or one of the two piano quintets that Franz Schmidt had composed for the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Once Brunner had the idea of having Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s two piano trios performed in one evening, and commissioned a young chamber ensemble to prepare the pieces.
Gradually, ORF was able to record more and more concerts by “Musica Juventutis,” which greatly benefited the diversity of the Ö1 radio program. And if Dr. Brunner considered a concert that was not on the ORF’s “wish list” worthy of recording, he made representations to the respective music director. And I can’t remember a time when he didn’t get his way.

After a few years it got to the point where such discussions were unnecessary and we were able to record all the seasonal concerts in the series. And that is still the case today.

On the basis laid at that time twenty-three years ago, everything was able to develop further, so that the cooperation between “Musica Juventutis” and ORF can undoubtedly be called a success story. And this would not have been possible if the two subsequent secretaries general, Christa-Maria Schuster and Viola Wasmuth, had not continued to pursue this goal in an exemplary manner, intensively and persistently.

And today, when I let what has been achieved sink in, I sometimes still see him standing in front of me in the summer of 1995 with his eyes wide open, the Jerger student, dermatologist and bassist Dr. Norbert Brunner.

But since, as is well known, one must never stop at what has been “achieved”, I wish “Musica Juventutis” continuous further development and, above all, wide-open ears and eyes to discover growing, new talents.”