Research is focused on music performance as a form of communication between performer and audience. This firstly includes the performer’s analytical and hermeneutic understanding of the work and its implicit reading and performance conventions. Research into selected areas of historical and contemporary performance practice is also regarded as essential. In addition, the performative action of the artist interpreting the work is investigated with respect to neuroscientific, psychological and physiological aspects, ultimately with the aim of reflecting on the action on the audience of the performance as an aesthetic and physical presence, and the associated reactive impact on the status of the work. Attention is given to the improvisation, composition, arrangement and reproduction of historical and contemporary music, in the widest possible variety of performance and documentation formats.