Share
An Honour for Gottfried Preisl, Vienna – Austriaby Herbert Scheibenreif |
Last Friday, Andreas Mailath Pokorny (center), Vienna’s Head of the Cultural Department, presented the Golden Decoration for Cultural Services for his home town to Gottfried Preisl (picture right - CIA Honored Friend of the Accordion in 2008), who created a place for the world music in Vienna. Without any exaggeration Preisl could be called “maker of world-music festivals”. Many musicians, like Laudator and chief of the Tschuschenkapelle Slavko Ninic, have to be thankful to Preisl for giving them opportunities for concert appearances. He also succeeded in attracting a new public for the accordion coming to Vienna, even from abroad, in order to listen to concerts of the festival. Gottfried Preisl was working in a bank before becoming concert organizer. The native Viennese started the international accordion festival in 2000, which ranks among the established music festival of Vienna nowadays. In 2004 he created the Klezmer festival, which presented a program of exclusively Jewish music in Vienna for the very first time. |