Music brings pleasure: Nikolaus Harnoncourt reflects persuasively and passionately on his metier. His texts, speeches and interviews reveal the vision of a great artist, looking back on his own influence and far beyond into musical history. He addresses subjects such as the urgency of art, Haydn, and “a crocodile called Mozart”, and considers romantic insight and baroque reminiscence. He gazes into the depths of an immoral world and shares anecdotes from the Vienna Music Society. He explains why artists cannot lie, why The Magic Flute remains an eternal mystery, and why great art ultimately arises from doubt.

The epic story of one of the most fascinating families of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

An handcart and the infidelity of an attractive bookseller’s-daughter launch the story: Jutta Jacobi tells the tale of Johann Schnitzler, talented son of a poor Jewish carpenter from Nagykanizsa, who became a famous Viennese doctor; of his son Arthur, who changed from a sex maniac to a moralist; of his wife Frau Olga, the most remorseful divorcee ever, of Lili, who found happiness at the side of a fascist officer; of Heinrich, forced to emigrate to America in 1938; of Arthur’s grandsons Peter and Michael, who free themselves from the burden of the past; and of great granddaughter Giuliana, who decorates the graves in the Central Cemetery with stars. A story of desire, warmed by humour, with changing perspectives over the course of the narrative.

Von Sultanen, die sich als Renaissancefürsten verstehen, und Elefanten, die fränkischen Herrschern als Geschenk überreicht werden

Popes who studied at Arab universities; Turkish princes who grew up with European Emperors’ sons; Persian kings who saved Greek philosophy from destruction. Whether it was banks, minnesingers, or the concept of romantic love – many ideas perceived as western are in fact developments shared between orient and occident. This book shows how there has always been exchange between these purportedly very different cultures and, despite wars and religious differences, how they developed into a unified whole. Dispensing with clichés it describes a cultural cohabitation which extends to the present day. A journey into ourselves and the diversity we hold within us.

The individuals surrounding the great composer and conductor

Gustav Mahler’s circle of friends and colleagues ran into hundreds. Alongside famous contemporaries such as Richard Strauss and Gerhart Hauptmann, it included many people whose connection to Mahler is well known, but about whom we otherwise know little – from opera singer Rosa Papier, who was instrumental to Mahler’s engagement at the Vienna State Opera; landscape photographer Hugo Henneberg, whose wife Marie became godmother to Mahler’s daughter; to the lawyer Serafin Bondi, a member of the vegetarian association Mahler also belonged to. The book provides seventy fascinating biographies, filling the many gaps in Mahler’s biography.

Evil is all around all the time.

“We are all trying to dance on a golden globe really, whichever and whatever way it rolls,” Swiss businessman Weill, import/export specialist, says philosophically to his partner Blaschky in Vienna’s Café Imperial. At the same time has-been poet Josef Maria Wassertheurer sits on a Vienna market square fantasizing about his next masterpiece, and far away in St Petersburg a mysterious Mr Chernomyrdin is waiting for a crucial phone call. The criminal network of globalists stretches from Zürich and Paris to Bucharest and Moscow, even including the idyllic Salzkammergut. Maintaining a light touch throughout, Peter Rosei has created a satire which makes reality more visible by distorting it – so evilly you will laugh.

Two sisters in a house at the edge of the woods: more than enough ingredients for power games at the boundaries of the forbidden.

Karin lives with her boyfriend Alexander in a house by the woods. Her foster-sister Lisa once lived there too, along with her parents August and Inge, sister Margarethe and brother Peter. Back then Karin and Lisa were happy; they grew as fast as the brambles, dived to the bottom of the lake hand in hand, and hid in the tiny caves formed by tree roots. Then something happened; August died and the foster child was banished. Years later Karin fetches Lisa back, and the two women become entangled in a game as destructive as it is seductive, sucked into a whirlpool of addiction, attraction and repulsion which holds us enthralled till the final page.

Merciless as the twentieth century and uplifting as only great literature can be

Born in Romania between the wars, raised in poverty and washed up in Austria by the turmoil of war, Mrs Berta’s life was one of humiliation, pain and misery. Now in an old people’s home, she describes these violent events to the narrator. He in turn lives in the Pension Adler, with various tattooed, one-armed guests, as well as kindly Swedish women. In the home, with its shifty inmates and carers, he begins to feel comfortable, and takes detailed notes of Mrs Berta’s story. Max Blaeulich’s novel illuminates every shade of despair there is. Yet existential loneliness has seldom been described with such assured language and unsparing precision since Kafka.

An insight into the empress’ character; politics and intrigue at the Vienna court

The bosom friend of ‘Sisi’, Empress Elisabeth, the highly intelligent, highly attractive aristocrat Marie Festetics, wrote a detailed diary over many years. This sensational source text is finally available in full. Over more than 2000 pages, Festetics provides a no-holes-barred description of life at the imperial court, with all its intrigues – mainly against the empress she so admired. Countess Festetics analyses Sisi’s character and describes her changing emotions and her relationship with Emperor Franz Joseph. She makes razor-sharp judgements of the extended Imperial family and the significant figures of her time. A fascinating journal!

Klaus Oppitz and the Round Table Fleeing from it all!

Austria in the not too distant future: right-wing populist Michael Hichl has just begun his third term as prime minister; the country is not only free of foreigners, it is in recession, isolated internationally and crippled by inflation and unemployment. In search of a brighter future, the Putschek family emigrate to what is now one of the richest EU countries, Turkey. On their eventful journey, the Putscheks meet Burgenland racketeers, authentic Arian Hungarians, shady people-traffickers, and politically persecuted Carinthians, finally landing in an Istanbul refugee centre. It is very hard to integrate, however, when a member of the family is slowly losing their mind. The Round Table consists of Klaus Oppitz, Rudi Roubinek, Mike Bernard and Gerald Fleischhacker. The other knights of the Round Table assisted the creation of Emigration Day with wordplay, tips and feedback. The four have pooled their diverse talents and with their combined strength have become leading writers on the Austrian comedy scene.