William Osborne
100260.243@compuserve.com
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The Vienna Philharmonic Returns, Still Virtually a Male Bastion
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
NEW YORK -- As usual there were sold-out houses at Carnegie Hall for the
series of three concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic, under the conductor
Riccardo Muti, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. As usual the playing of
this esteemed orchestra, with its distinctively warm sound and its palpable
connection to a renowned musical heritage, was remarkable.
It was a privilege to hear the performances of symphonies by Mozart,
Schubert, Schumann and Tchaikovsky over three nights. Thursday night's
account of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony was extraordinary, perhaps because
the music is the least closely associated with the orchestra and
consequently was the most unusual. The way the Vienna Philharmonic's
mellifluous violins and plaintive woodwinds caressed the music's spare,
grieving melodic lines made this elusive work seem newly powerful:
Shostakovich takes us to deep, painful places here, but the Vienna
Philharmonic was there to hold our hands and make it safe.
Also as usual when this orchestra comes to town, some protesters from the
National Organization for Women stood outside the hall distributing
leaflets that castigated the Vienna Philharmonic for sexism and misogyny.
In previous years the NOW contingent has been larger. This time there were
just a handful of women keeping up the fight, perhaps because the orchestra
has taken some steps, at least officially, to change its ways and is now a
harder target.
For 156 years the Vienna Philharmonic, Austria's pre-eminent cultural
institution, was a male-only preserve. But early in 1997, bowing to
pressure from women's groups abroad as well as Government officials at home
and dismayed over the bad publicity that the protests overseas was
generating, the orchestra voted to open its ranks to women. As a first
gesture Anna Lelkes, a harpist who had played with the Vienna Philharmonic
for 25 years on an adjunct basis, was made its first official female
member. Another harpist, Julie Palloc, has been hired full time, although
she did not participate in the Carnegie Hall concerts.
The other charges that have dogged the orchestra, which the NOW protest
leveled again, concern xenophobia and racism. Over the years some outspoken
players have lent credibility to these accusations through public
statements about the need to protect the orchestra's national character,
and with other code words. In a 1996 article in The Journal of the
International Alliance for Women in Music, the orchestra's principal
flutist, Dieter Flury, was quoted as saying: "If one thinks that the world
should function by quota regulations, then it is naturally irritating that
we are a group of white-skinned males who perform exclusively the music of
white-skinned male composers." But, he added, for the sake of the
orchestra's incomparable pedigree, "it is worthwhile to accept this racist
and sexist irritation."
At least officially, Flury's position has lost out. The reasons long given
by the old guard for barring women -- that they will cause disorder and
create competition among the men, that they play with a different character
than men, that their pregnancies would disrupt scheduling -- seem laughably
antiquated. Such notions conjure up images of women as temptresses and
harken to times when the sight of a cello between a woman's legs was
considered unfeminine.
But a change in its membership policy will not soon change the makeup of
the Vienna Philharmonic, as the eerie sight of one lone female, Ms. Lelkes,
amid a stage full of white males during the Shostakovich symphony made
abundantly clear. Bringing more women to the orchestra will take a huge
dose of something akin to affirmative action, a policy that is dreaded in
conservative Austria and that is controversial most everywhere else, and
that will never happen.
Yet even many critics who deplore the male domination of the Vienna
Philharmonic are wary about advocating quick fixes, for there is something
indisputably worth preserving here that goes beyond the orchestra's
technical excellence and musical sensitivity. In terms of precision and
virtuosity there are orchestras that surpass it. Wednesday night's
all-Mozart program concluded with an ebullient performance of the overture
to "Le Nozze di Figaro." But the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James
Levine performed the work this fall with comparable grace and even fleeter
dexterity.
What the Vienna Philharmonic players achieve to an uncanny degree is
unanimity of musical purpose. This is not just a product of the orchestra's
famously cultivated sound: the vibrant, warm strings, the plangent brass,
the poignantly reedy woodwinds, the incisive but never intrusive
percussion. It is a product of shared thinking and a willingness, even an
eagerness, to work toward mutual ends.
Surely the fact that since World War II the orchestra has been run
essentially by the players themselves, without a permanent music director,
is one reason for the solidarity. The musicians essentially hold down two
jobs: they are hired by the Austrian government into the ranks of the
Vienna State Opera Orchestra and run the Philharmonic as an independent
enterprise.
Naturally the players work often and closely with guest conductors whom
they respect, Muti among them. This might seem a curious choice at first
for a player-run ensemble, given Muti's strong-willed, meticulous approach
to conducting. But when he takes the helm of this orchestra he is a
deferential and calming captain.
His performances of Mozart's "Linz" Symphony, "Prague" Symphony and
Symphony No. 40 in G minor allowed no interpretive funny business. This was
vigorous, clear-headed Mozart. Tempos were lithe but never rushed. Menuetto
movements were hearty but never forced. The early music movement seems to
have passed Muti and the Vienna players right by. But these full-bodied
performances had a transcendent kind of authenticity.
The Schumann Symphony No. 2, notorious for its thick-textured
orchestration, was played with such uniformity of sound and largeness of
conception that the music became an organic river of swirling, restless
harmony and counterpoint. Yet the magisterial sweep and impressive
structure of the work never seemed more daring.
Tchaikovsky's seldom-heard and terribly difficult "Manfred" Symphony, not
one of the six numbered symphonies, is essentially an oversize tone poem.
The music is often unwieldy: the composer begins a fugue with a cumbersome
theme in the last movement, but wisely abandons the idea fairly soon. But
Muti, a commanding presence, had it sounding like the most cogent and
inevitable music imaginable.
This Italian conductor also knows when to stay out of the way, as he did,
charmingly, in the affable trio section of the minuet of Schubert's
youthful Symphony No. 3: he cued the beginning of each phrase, then stood
with his arms at his sides, just keeping an eye on things. orchestra came
at the beginning of the first concert, when the players, without a
conductor, offered Mozart's short and consolingly sad "Maurerische
Trauermusik" in memory of Judith Arron, the director of Carnegie Hall, who
died in December.
Obviously, the unanimity of purpose that the Vienna Philharmonic has
achieved is a precious thing and you can understand their fear of diluting
it. But what accounts for this quality? The maleness of the players? Maybe
that was so in a time when women routinely were oppressed, but it makes no
sense any longer. More likely the special cohesiveness comes from a shared
commitment to a revered heritage. Why should fine female musicians not be
able to embrace this heritage and work ethic as well as men? Over the
decades many sons have followed their fathers into this orchestra. Cannot
daughters do the same?
Interestingly, the orchestra always has sought young players. At auditions
no one over 35 is selected. Looking at all the youthful faces, I kept
wondering what these men must think about the orchestra's history of
prejudice against women. Do they approve? Are they go-along, get-along
chauvinists or closet feminists waiting for the old guard to pass away?
If more women join its ranks, the orchestra certainly will change. But why
should that not be an enriching change? The players already have a weighty
tradition to uphold. It must be tiring to also cart around all that
manhood.
As the players walked onstage to take their places on Thursday, a friend
who had come with me, a woman whose feminist convictions were offended by
the orchestra's male domination but who was vanquished by the music making,
sighed and said, "All those men look so lonely up there." They need not be.