Also: “The Culture Week” – from 9.05 a.m. on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – On Palm Sunday, April 2, 2023, the “matinee” at 9.05 a.m. on ORF 2 will give a foretaste of Easter and will be dedicated to the different Easter traditions in Austria’s southernmost province with the documentary “Reindling, Ham, Easter Fire – Easter Customs in Carinthia”. . Then, in the new production “Breaking Rachmaninoff” (9.50 a.m.), composer, violinist and musical comedian Aleksey Igudesman approaches the famous Russian composer, whose 150th birthday is on April 1, in a tongue-in-cheek manner: Artists have their say of different genres such as Billy Joel, Yuja Wang, Paavo Järvi or Mischa Maisky. “The culture week” (10.30 a.m.) with current reports and tips concludes the culture morning presented by Teresa Vogl.
“Reindling, ham, Easter fire – Easter customs in Carinthia” (9.05 a.m.)
In probably no other state in Austria is Easter celebrated as extensively as in Carinthia – with a sumptuous Easter snack with the traditional Reindling, ham, eggs and fresh horseradish, lace-made holy cloths or various Easter games for young and old. The end of Lent will be in Austria southernmost federal state is not only celebrated in culinary terms: Easter is a festival that is celebrated with different, sometimes bizarre customs, as the documentation by Anita Lackenberger shows.
After the blessing of the Easter fire on Saturday morning, the faithful bring it home with the help of glowing tree sponges. Once upon a time, the kitchen stove was lit with this sacred ember and only then could the ham be cooked. The Easter snack, packed in magnificent votive baskets, also receives the blessing of the Church. The votive cloths for these baskets, lined and embroidered with bobbin lace, are made according to old tradition. The eggs are also often specially treated, dyed with vegetable dyes and decorated with imprints of herbs. So every Easter egg is a unique image of spring.
The heart of the Carinthian Easter snack is the Reindling – a yeast cake filled with lots of sugar, cinnamon and optionally raisins and nuts and baked in the so-called “Rein”. There are other regional Easter specialties in Carinthia, such as “Filled Butter” with alcohol and poppy seeds or the “Röhrlsalat” made from freshly cut dandelion leaves. The film leads to Easter markets, to traditional arts and crafts workshops, to Carinthian kitchens and to public places where Easter traditions are practiced. These include, in addition to the culinary specialties, traditions such as egg rolls, ball pricking or communal singing.
„Breaking Rachmaninoff“ (9.50 Uhr)
Breaking Rachmaninoff is a lovingly humorous documentary about the search for a great composer who managed to overcome his depression by misspelling his own name. Similar to Sergei Rachmaninoff, who clung to his post-romantic compositional style and always struggled to be taken seriously, Aleksey Igudesman – himself an immigrant and prolific composer – tries to openly and honestly expose the inherent insecurities of composers in this unusual artist portrait. The fact that Rachmaninoff was born on April 1 lends itself perfectly to Igudesman’s famously witty antics. So what to do? It’s simple: he’s showering Sergei with text messages and trying to invite him to his own birthday party! While Igudesman travels around the world and interviews famous musicians of different genres such as Yuja Wang, Paavo Järvi, Mischa Maisky or Billy Joel, he skilfully deals with a wide variety of topics such as performance anxiety and writer’s block with his very personal, humorous, but nevertheless revealing questions .
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