Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concert 2018

[LHC]

Hiya LHC,

Players certainly won't be leaving the Berliner Philharmoniker in a hurry either but it has managed to implement a fairer gender balance.

Yes, but the VPO started from a very low base (0 in 1997, when the first woman was appointed).

A quick search online suggests that in 2005, the VPO still had the lowest percentage of women of any Orchestra at just 0.83%. By 2009, this had risen to 2.42%, and according to the VPO's own site, the percentage of women members is now at about 10%.

By comparison, the percentage of women members of the BPO in 2005 was 13%; and in 2009, 13.8%. It now stands at 14.7%.

It would appear from this that while the BPO still has a few more women members than the VPO, the rate of improvement in Vienna is actually much better than in Berlin!

[Hornspieler]

The Vienna Philharmonic also play for the Vienna State Opera, and the actual number of players on contract is actually greater than you will see on stage. There is a sort of rotation system which seems to suit everyone.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The other question, slightly muddled in with the above, related to the 'Boskovsky sound', compared with that produced under (say) Muti this month. The orchestra seems to have a range of differing 'sounds' created corporatly.

I suggested that this could partly be a result of recording venues. Most Boskovsky recordings were studio-made in the Sofiensaal (the exception being the live 1979 NYD Concert). Subsequent concerts have been recorded by RCA, Sony, DG & EMI.

[Hornspieler]

This is a cartoon of me after one of those ghastly Sunday Night Victor Hochauser Viennese Nights* with the CBSO at the Royal Albert Hall.

Drawn by a colleague in the orchestra this is a three legged Hornspieler having had quite enough for the night!

My thanks to our host Richard Tarleton for setting this up for me.



* Usually conducted by Anatole Fistoulari.

[jonfan]

Ref: Solti and VPO.
Yes, appalling treatment, but does it say quite a lot about Solti that for many he and VPO produced a pretty definitive Ring? I mean,The Ring is not a bunch of Lehar bobs-bons, is it?
To have got them to produce just about tops over many, many hours of the intensity and intimacy of a recording studio seems to me to say something meaningful about both orchestra AND Solti?

Somewhere in John Culshaw's 'Ring Resounding' he says, quite nicely, that to get the best out of the VPO you have to dominate and show who's boss. Any hint of indecsion and they dominate and become just plain awkward. Solti dominated and so did Bernstein, a style of communication with an orchestra that one would think was the opposite of what the VPO could take.
Another point of Culshaw's is their slowness at learning new scores and he cites the recording of 'The Planets' done with Karajan in the early '60's. Apparently the disc was almsot not issued, so tentative was the playing. It's an interesting listen now.

[Stanfordian]

Yes, but the VPO started from a very low base (0 in 1997, when the first woman was appointed).

A quick search online suggests that in 2005, the VPO still had the lowest percentage of women of any Orchestra at just 0.83%. By 2009, this had risen to 2.42%, and according to the VPO's own site, the percentage of women members is now at about 10%.

By comparison, the percentage of women members of the BPO in 2005 was 13%; and in 2009, 13.8%. It now stands at 14.7%.

It would appear from this that while the BPO still has a few more women members than the VPO, the rate of improvement in Vienna is actually much better than in Berlin!

I'm glad to hear it! In addition to gender I've been told that in Berlin it has achieved a wider international reach in the player's nationalities.

[Once Was 4]

Somewhere in John Culshaw's 'Ring Resounding' he says, quite nicely, that to get the best out of the VPO you have to dominate and show who's boss. Any hint of indecsion and they dominate and become just plain awkward. Solti dominated and so did Bernstein, a style of communication with an orchestra that one would think was the opposite of what the VPO could take.
Another point of Culshaw's is their slowness at learning new scores and he cites the recording of 'The Planets' done with Karajan in the early '60's. Apparently the disc was almsot not issued, so tentative was the playing. It's an interesting listen now.

There is also a commercial recording of the VPO playing Stravinsky's Pulcinella which sounds like a reasonably good amateur orchestra sight reading - I am sorry that I do not have further details but it was once played on 'Record Review' mainly to show how the name of the VPO did not always mean high quality.
The comment about orchestras not needing to like conductors in order to play well for them is well made. I have been listening to a lot of Furwangler/BPO recordings and also looking at films on YouTube of Celibadache, not only with the Munich Philharmonic but also with unknown professional orchestras such as the Torino Symphony Orchestra. How these two highly disagreeable men could get such wonderful results is a marvel Surely, no player went home from these performances thinking what a nice man they had been working for. I personally have played for conductors who have been very highly liked and respected for their personal qualities but who, nevertheless, have sometimes driven players to despair by their semi-competence. The late Farquharson Cousins, who passed away recently having just celebrated his 100th birthday, spent a lifetime playing 1st horn in several different professional orchestras; he reminisced about the number of times he had played in fine performances which had been achieved mainly because the players felt a sense of relief in getting in front of an audience after a dismal rehearsal or rehearsals; I too have experienced this several times.

[DracoM]

I think amateur ensembles are far more likely to crash and burn with a conductor they cannot cope with / who cannot cope with them. Singers even more so.

Pros can shrug and trust to their skills and get on with it, knowing by uncanny osmosis that the rest of the band feel much as they do, hence creating a powerful sense of unanimity which has nothing or very little to do with the stick-waver.

[Richard Tarleton]

This is a cartoon of me after one of those ghastly Sunday Night Victor Hochauser Viennese Nights with the CBSO at the Royal Albert Hall.

Drawn by a colleague in the orchestra this is a three legged Hornspieler having had quite enough for the night!

Worthy of Hoffnung, that, HS

[gradus]

Solti called the VPO the world's greatest Wagner orchestra or words to that effect - easy to hear why - but perhaps he had more than their playing abilities in mind.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Solti called the VPO the world's greatest Wagner orchestra or words to that effect - easy to hear why - but perhaps he had more than their playing abilities in mind.

Ouch!

[Hornspieler]

I think amateur ensembles are far more likely to crash and burn with a conductor they cannot cope with / who cannot cope with them. Singers even more so.

Pros can shrug and trust to their skills and get on with it, knowing by uncanny osmosis that the rest of the band feel much as they do, hence creating a powerful sense of unanimity which has nothing or very little to do with the stick-waver.

In the LPO, Sir George Solti was nicknamed "The Screaming Skull" but he cerainly got results.

A great contrast after the much-loved Sir Adrian Boult!

[Darkbloom]

Ref: Solti and VPO.
Yes, appalling treatment, but does it say quite a lot about Solti that for many he and VPO produced a pretty definitive Ring? I mean,The Ring is not a bunch of Lehar bobs-bons, is it?
To have got them to produce just about tops over many, many hours of the intensity and intimacy of a recording studio seems to me to say something meaningful about both orchestra AND Solti?

I agree, although the Solti Ring has become very unfashionable with 'experts' it seems. Whether it's because it has become over-familiar and its flaws are more obvious than it's virtues (that woefully inadequate Fasolt always annoys me) or something else, I'm not sure. I still think it's a huge achievement.

[Prommer]

I cannot agree - I accept the Halle is not the VPO but Barbirolli was just as fine a conductor of this repertoire as HVK and CK . Nobody else I have heard comes close in Lehar's Gold and Silver for example.

Just listened to the 1968 Viennese Night Prom again, which had JB conducting Gold & Silver as the last piece. That was wonderful, I grant you. Got the audience humming nicely along, almost making it seem like some sort of English sweetheart/Tommy tune...! (This is not mean to insult it at all...)

When was it last performed at the NYD concert, I wonder?

Maybe Thielemann could programme it and try to get them humming along next year. Would make a change from the rather "rigid and dead" clapping during the Radetsky.

[Petrushka]

Been listening recently to the newly reissued recordings of Clemens Krauss with the VPO which were made for Decca in the early 1950s: https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Year-Co...clemens+krauss

Despite the obvious limitations of mono sound, here is the Vienna Philharmonic in all its glory and very likely with Willi Boskovsky as leader too. Essential listening for all Strauss family enthusiasts and, I would say, the best account of Josef's Sphärenklänge I've yet heard.