Music, food and death, it has been said, are the Viennese obsessions. And for centuries it has seemed the majority of Viennese would happily march to their eternal reward, well fed or not, so long as they had music to serenade them along the way.
Vienna’s dedication to music is matched only by the fierce proprietary pride it takes in its musical institutions. Perhaps no institution better exemplifies the city’s semi-enclosed cultural tradition than the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Among the world’s leading orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic stands unique. French composer Hector Berlioz, not noted for his verbal extravagance, said the orchestra “may be equaled by a few others, but it is surpassed by none.” His opinion seems as defensible today as it was when he uttered it early in the 19th Century.
The Vienna Philharmonic is international by virtue of the lofty artistic standards it presents to the world, by its international tours (including a three-concert visit to New York’s Carnegie Hall under Georg Solti March 3 to 5) and recordings, by its lasting contributions to the orchestral art, by its 150-year association with the world’s finest conductors and soloists.
At the same time, the “Vienna Phil” (as its admirers call it) has obstinately guarded its local character, refusing to alter its cherished identity at a time when other world-class ensembles seem to be moving toward a kind of musical singlespeak. In that sense the orchestra belongs to Vienna alone, with a sound and playing style as thoroughly Viennese as Sachertorte.
It is hardly surprising, then, that a city whose lifeblood is imperial nostalgia should have produced an orchestra whose 149 members consider themselves royalty. Hence the title of Clemens Hellsberg’s history of the Vienna Philharmonic, “A Democracy of Kings,” published (only in German, alas) in 1992 to coincide with the orchestra’s 150th birthday celebration.
Royalty has its privileges, and one of the Vienna Phil’s most basic privileges is that it employs no permanent music director and the players themselves choose the guest conductors. An independent, self-governing body, these musicians decide which repertoire to play, what to record and with whom, which new players to audition and admit into their ranks. They even vote on the width of trouser stripes to be worn at the orchestra’s reverentially attended Sunday morning concerts.
The orchestra is further unique in that it operates under two names, depending on the musical occasion. As the Vienna Philharmonic, it performs just under 80 concerts a season, makes recordings and tours. But the Philharmonic, with very few changes of personnel, also serves as the resident orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, and, as such, the musicians are paid like any other federal employees. It is, most observers would agree, the finest opera orchestra in the world, certainly the most experienced.
Walter Blovsky, the Vienna Phil violist who has held the elected title of general manager since 1990, said musicians’ salaries are uniform, about $99,000 annually, though section principals make slightly more money, depending on seniority.
“One thing you must consider is we do the work of two orchestras,” he said. “The orchestra does 190 to 200 services each year as the Vienna Philharmonic. Add 300 performances of opera and up to 120 rehearsals, depending on the repertoire, and you get quite a lot.” Blovsky’s central responsibility is to coordinate the orchestra’s activities, many of which require a full three years of planning.
Although musicians are paid monthly for their work as the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, their remuneration for concert and recording work is meted out on a project-by-project basis. Federal subsidy is remarkably low-about $250,000-which means the Vienna Phil must earn the bulk of its income from concert fees, tickets, tours, recording royalties and opera. Opera performances, in fact, account for some 40 percent to 60 percent of the average player’s income, according to Blovsky.
The Vienna Philharmonic sounds different from other orchestras, with a warmth and burnished beauty of tone, a subtlety of inflection and a wealth of dynamic nuance that extends from the first desk to the last. The Viennese traditionally have been uneasy with change, so they take great satisfaction in the fact that the quality of playing by the Vienna Phil has remained constant, no matter who is waving the baton.
Part of this has to do with the special aesthetic and pedagogic tradition that has long been cultivated in Vienna. The orchestra’s uniquely warm sound has inspired such composers as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler and Strauss, both Johann Jr. and Richard. Their works remain the bedrock of the Vienna Phil repertoire-indeed the entire Austro-German musical tradition-however stormy their personal relations with this arrogant democracy of kings. (Mahler once admitted that when a player did not immediately execute his orders, “I feel like killing him on the spot.”)
Almost all of its members-Blovsky likes to call them “the colleagues”-have been steeped in the same musical ambience since birth. Almost all are products of the same musical education at the same school, the Vienna Academy of Music. The roster contains a few outsiders: Six hail from North America, two from as far away as New Zealand. Everyone else has been trained to play in the Viennese manner, with the same communal feel for accentuation and articulation.
By the same token, performing traditions are handed down from master to pupil, several of whom sit side by side in the orchestra. The personnel list is further notable for its brothers and father-and-son pairs. There has never been a female musician in the orchestra, however, making the Vienna Phil the last of the orchestral men’s clubs.
Blovsky says Austrian law regarding the compensation an employer must grant women on maternity leave would make it financially ruinous if the orchestra were to allow female musicians into its ranks. But most observers insist this dubious rationale is simply another instance of the Viennese resistance to change.
“They won’t be pressured to change, because they are a private institution,” explains Viennese-born conductor Karl Sollak, a house conductor at the Vienna State Opera and former conductor of the DePaul University Symphony. “I’m surprised they still hold onto this outmoded tradition. They make a lot of excuses for not engaging women musicians. But the only reason, when you come right down to it, is they don’t want them.”
On the other hand, few groups of orchestral musicians are as committed to what they do, collectively or individually, as the Vienna Philharmonic, Sollak adds.
“I will tell you a story. The day after the orchestra had given a concert under a famous maestro (who shall remain nameless), I happened to run into one of the players. I asked him how the concert went. He looked very unhappy. `Touch my shirt,’ he said. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I touched it. His shirt was completely dry. `That’s the problem!’ the player exclaimed.”
Another reason the Vienna Philharmonic retains such a distinctive sound is the instruments themselves. The woodwinds and brass produce a mellow, homogeneous sound using instruments of a special size and bore. The oboe in particular is a direct descendant of the old German Baroque oboe, which contributes-along with a special type of reed-making-to the instrument’s ability to blend seamlessly with the strings at lower dynamic levels.
“It is important the oboe not stick out from the rest of the orchestra sound,” says Dietmar Zeman, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist. “That can happen more easily with the French oboe used elsewhere.” Vienna Phil horn players also prefer their wider-bore, and more treacherous, F horn. Says Zeman: “I think it’s virtually impossible for an outsider to come in and switch to our kind of horn playing.”
The Vienna Phil once wore its inflexibility as a badge, refusing to alter its sound or basic manner of inflection from one conductor to the next. Which may be why the late Karl Bohm, with whom the orchestra enjoyed a long association in concert and opera during the 1950s and ’60s, once accused the musicians of “a certain intellectual laziness,” adding that “the Philharmonic’s democracy sometimes seems to lead to absurdity.”
This unwillingness to change has extended to the orchestra’s repertoire as well: From 1969 to 1994 the Vienna Phil played only two works by living composers.
Now all that may be changing. In recent years orchestra members actually have been known to boast of their ability to play in many styles for many conductors. Moreover, the Vienna Phil has been more actively searching out conductors with fresh ideas, such as Pierre Boulez and Simon Rattle, who had never been associated with the ensemble.
Sollak says he recently attended three successive weekends of Vienna Phil concerts in the orchestra’s ornate, gilt-laden Musikvereinsaal, each program led by a different conductor-Claudio Abbado, James Levine and Lorin Maazel.
The results? “Here you had three really different characters, and they got a different sound out of the orchestra each time,” Sollak says. “It was recognizably the same Vienna Philharmonic, of course. The differences lay in the details. It all goes to show these musicians react very sensitively to every conductor.”
So, too, has the orchestra moved, albeit reluctantly, into the 20th Century. Blovsky, who makes the orchestra’s programs with some consultation of the players’ executive committee, says he has “pushed a little bit” to gain a regular berth in the repertoire for such established moderns as Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and Zemlinsky. Since its 150th anniversary in 1992, the Vienna Phil has commissioned a new work every season; composers have included Boulez, Hans Werner Henze and Friedrich Cerha.
If this most fundamentally conservative of today’s great orchestras can teach itself a few new musical tricks of this type, then surely anything is possible.
