A fragile harmony
It may have been an omen. As I passed through Heathrow on the way to Vienna, I met the pianist András Schiff, who was going to play a concert in Milan. Schiff has said he will boycott Austria as long as the Freedom Party – seen by some as apologists for Nazism – are part of the governing coalition. Many other artists and musicians have taken a similar stance, but the Vienna Philharmonic – the city’s best-known cultural ambassadors – had been silent. I hoped to break that silence.
Some say the Vienna Philharmonic is the best orchestra in the world, and it jealously guards its reputation and its great traditions. (This, after all, is the orchestra that can number Wagner, Verdi, Bruckner, Brahms and Liszt among its conductors.) Others think it’s stuffy, conservative in its repertoire and misogynistic; it has only one full woman member, a harpist, and dark stories circulate about the producer of the televised concert on New Year’s Day being told to ensure that she was not shown on screen. When the orchestra appeared at the Proms last September, some thought it the highlight of the season; others were appalled to see an all-male ensemble on stage, however sweet the sound.
I was in Vienna for a press conference announcing a concert to be played on May 7, in a quarry at the former concentration camp of Mauthausen, about 120 miles from the capital. The Vienna Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle will play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in a performance which will be broadcast worldwide.
Rattle supplied the epigraph for the booklet explaining the reasons for a concert at Mauthausen, where more than 100,000 people from all over Europe died. “There are people who ask: ‘Why is a chord of B flat political?’ I believe that they miss an essential truth, that music is intimately bound up with all the events of its planet, be they light or dark.”
There has been opposition to the concert in Austria – some argue that silence can be the only testimony to those who died – but the orchestra’s chairman, Clemens Hellsberg, has no doubts of its value. “This concert is a symbol of human capabilities – on both the dark side and the bright side. Mauthausen is a place where human beings made a hell for other human beings. Beethoven’s Ninth conjures up the idea of heaven, of eternity. We have both inside us. It asks questions of us – what have I done, what am I doing to make the world better? Everybody has to start with himself.”
The rise of Jörg Haider’s rightwing Freedom party poses problems for the orchestra, and the question of whether members of the government attend the concert is certain to become an issue. Leon Zelman, head of the Jewish Welcome Service, told me none would be invited, but there are suggestions that the interior minister may attend. Despite the controversy and pressure from fellow musicians, the Vienna Philharmonic has no plans yet publicly to condemn Haider’s controversial party, which is an equal partner in the Conservative government.
“If the government behaved anti- democratically or something happened that was not right, we would be the first on the streets,” says Wolfgang Schuster, who as well as being a percussionist of 40 years’ standing with the orchestra also handles its press relations. (It is a unique feature of the Vienna Philharmonic that, apart from three secretaries, it has no specialist management: the 150 players elect a committee which is responsible for the administration and Hellsberg, the de facto chief executive, is also a full-time violinist.)
“If there were political developments in this country in which individuals were discriminated against because of their race, or policies were put into effect which showed anti-democratic tendencies, the Vienna Philharmonic would immediately react,” says Peter Poltun of the Vienna State Opera, where for 300 nights a year the orchestra performs as the house band. “The Vienna Philharmonic is the oldest democratic institution in Austria. Emperors have come and gone, dictators have come and gone, American and British occupation has come and gone, but the Philharmonic has remained.”
The orchestra was established in 1842 on the basis of four principles which still apply today: only a musician engaged by the Vienna State Opera can be a member of the Vienna Philharmonic; the orchestra is self-financing and self-governing; all decisions (including, outside the opera house, what they play and who conducts) are made by the “general assembly” of all 150 active members; and an elected 12-member committee is responsible for the day-to-day administration.
There has been only one interruption in its 150-plus years of self-government, but it was a brutal and indelible one. In 1938, after Germany’s annexation of Austria, a pro-Nazi chairman was imposed on the orchestra and there was a purge of its Jewish members, six of whom were murdered in concentration camps. Two of its greatest conductors, Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini, immediately severed their connections with the orchestra; Wilhelm Furtwängler remained and, like Richard Strauss, was widely criticised after the war for not having resisted Nazism.
The Vienna Philharmonic realises better than most the dangers of political intolerance and is not blind to the lessons of history, but for now it is giving the government the benefit of the doubt. “Before we get totally hysterical and artists stop coming here,” says Poltun, “it might be a more commonsense approach to say, ‘Let’s wait and see.’ If any policies are developed that are directed against individuals for whatever reason, OK then go out on the streets, have full sanctions, have your prime minister jumping up and down and beating us on the head. There are many people from the Austrian president down who are watching what this government is doing, and the Vienna Philharmonic is among them, because this organisation doesn’t like anyone meddling in its business.”
This truculent independence sums up the spirit of the orchestra. It will follow its own logic and will not be swayed by those who think it is out of step with the times. “We have to go our own way and make music in our style,” says Hellsberg. “We must not look left or right. We try always to give our best on stage and that is what is decisive.”
This strict adherence to musical values is Hellsberg’s answer to the perennial question of why the Vienna Philharmonic, alone among the world’s top orchestras, is so bereft of women players. Auditions are conducted behind a curtain, and the best player is chosen, regardless of sex, race or nationality. Schuster rushes off to find the figures showing the proportion of women who attended the most recent auditions: the percentage is high; it’s just that none, apart from that lone harpist, has so far made the grade.
My suggestion that they might consider affirmative action is met with horror. “To recruit people because they are black or female really would be discrimination,” says Schuster. “At an audition, we don’t know who is playing and we don’t ask,” says Hellsberg. “We just listen and judge. There is no other question but who is the best.”
Soon, surely, women will enter the orchestra? Hellsberg gives no guarantees but he does say that in the next five or six years there will be around 50 vacancies. The implication is clear. At least, I think it is.
Oh, and what about that story of the producers of the New Year’s Day concert being told not to show the harpist on TV? “That’s nonsense, gibberish. There’s so much bullshit in the papers about this,” says Poltun. “No one ever gave an order to a cameraman not to show the woman. That story was made up by someone who wants to damage the orchestra.”
Once chosen, membership is for life unless, as happens occasionally, there is a disastrous falling-off in a player’s performance. The number of members is high because of the orchestra’s dual commitments – 300 nights in the opera house and around 80 concerts elsewhere, including engagements at the Salzburg festival and a hugely popular annual week at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Occasionally the orchestra (suitably reinforced by retired and aspiring members) is playing in the opera house and a concert hall simultaneously. Why not do it more often and double your income, I suggest? Hellsberg, who says he is already exhausted, only laughs.
In the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, which has been the Vienna Philharmonic’s home since 1870, Seiji Ozawa is putting the orchestra through its paces in Brahms’s Third Symphony. Ozawa is one of an extraordinary roster of regular conductors, which includes Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti and Valery Gergiev. Ozawa, who has been under pressure in the US to join the anti-Haider protest, is due to take over the baton at the Vienna State Opera in 2002 and is using this trip to take the political temperature.
The orchestra, true to its independent spirit, does not want a principal conductor. “Karajan once said about the Berlin Philharmonic, ‘I created my instrument,’” says Schuster. “We don’t want to be anybody’s instrument. We want to express our own personality, and to enjoy the stylistic variety of 12 or 14 of the world’s great conductors.”
How does such a strong-minded orchestra cope with dictatorial conductors? “We have no dictatorial conductors,” insists Hellsberg. “They are our guests. We invite them and with most of them we have very warm and long-standing relations. Mehta first worked with us in 1961, Maazel in 1962; they have become more than guests, they are our friends and our partners. We are all musicians together – which reminds me, I should go and rehearse now.” And with that he grabs his violin and heads for the stage of the Musikverein, one chief executive who certainly knows his place.
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