The focus of Wien Modern 2014, according to Artistic Director Matthias Lošek, is best summarised with the two English words ‘on screen’. In his editorial forward to the programme book, Lošek communicated the thinking behind the festival and explained that ‘“on screen” engages with the interface between film/television and contemporary music’. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the majority of events in the festival, which ran from 29 October until 21 November 2014, had a strong visual element. This precedence of the visual in a major contemporary music festival brought to mind a review of this year's Darmstadt courses: ‘Das Auge hört mit’, a reviewer of Darmstadt 2014 concluded in the latest issue of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, ‘the eye listens in’. The world, it seems, is not as we were taught: German-speaking Central Europe, for some the Mecca of absolute music, is looking elsewhere. How could this be?
