Vienna: ‘At least 10 years before a woman conducts New Year concert’
NewsThe chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Froschauer, is taking pride in the gentle progress his orchestra is making towards gender parity. This year, for the first time, girls will sing with the Vienna Boys Choir and around a dozen women will play as members of the orchestra. ‘We are not dinosaura,’ says Froschauer.
However, when it comes to a woman conducting the New Years Day extravaganza – still the most watched classical show on TV – Froschauer urges caution. The orchestra have worked recently, for instance, with Joanna Mallwitz of the Berlin Konzerthausorchester. But let’s not rush into a relationship.
Frischauer stipulates that, as a matter of policy, the Vienna Philharmonic only invite conductors to the New Year’s Concert after they have worked with them for at least ten years.
Very good news. If all (male) previous conductors of the New Years Concert had to establish a 10 year relationship with the orchestra, why should there apply other rules for women?
I’m in complete agreement with you, Achim.
Because they discriminated against women for 100 years (and continue to do so)?
It’s fine to have a “neutral” rule if everyone begins at the same starting line at the same time.
I can beat Usain Bolt in the 100m dash, if I get to start running 10 seconds before him.
But it’s not your job, nor anyone else’s, to bully the Vienna Philharmonic into compliance with you nor any other group of activists.
Vienna Phil is not the starting line for a conductor, more like the finishing line.
Today the starting line (aka starting music lessons, entering music school for a conducting program) is an even field for men and women (even more support for women there these days). It will take some time until the equally fast (good) ones reach the finish line.
Btw, it took Herbert Blomstedt over 80 years to be invited to the Vienna Phil for the first time.
While maintaining that ’10 years rule’ seems fair and logical, the plain fact is that the Vienna Phil. could play these works just as well with pretty much any competent, professional conductor – irrespective of gender, race, age, height, weight, political affiliation, stance on Russia/Ukraine, etc., etc. That said, I too wish there was a Willi Boskovsky type around these days.
“We are not dinosaurs” No dinosaurs didn’t wear glasses. Time they were dragged in to the 21st century.
And you’ve got just the truncheon and jack-boots to show them how.
Engaging in a bit of projection regarding your favorite dress-up choice? Tis the season for hope and joy; give it a try.
Classical music in its entirety is prehistoric and quite frankly irrelevant nowadays. We live in a small bubble, nobody cares about. Ask 10 members of your family who Barenboim is, what is the Concertgebouw Orchestra….you’ll be amazed how irrelevant this tiny niche world we live in, is. So yeah…we are dinosaurs in a way. Only difference is…people care about dinosaurs….
Any sophisticated and highly complex art form only exists in an elitist niche. Always has been that way.
It’s a major fallacy to expect popular interest toward the expression of the highest achievements of mankind.
I disagree about classical music being prehistoric. “There are two kinds of fools. One kind says something is old and therefor better. And the other says something is new and therefor better.”
No one cares. And they don’t care that they don;t care. Enjoy the decline in the West. Klassical Musak? Naaah hip hopping and tushy shaking–degenerate and debased west
In no time, even in 2050, would I ever want to see Mallwitz conducting that New Years Day extravaganza. And it has absolutely nothing to do with gender.
Upon what exactly are you basing this judgement? How many operas/concerts have you heard her conduct?
The future first great woman conductor is still a student, or perhaps still a child, or maybe not even born yet….
The ones famous or rising right now are all very fine in different ways, but none have the potential to become one of the truly greats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQOMSPWOEqc
We allowed this, we can surely allow a female to conduct the New Year Gala at the Musikverein.
“Allow”? This has more than a faint whiff of authoritarianism. “We”? Who the hell are “we”?
I’m growing exceedingly tired of the diktat.
Still fighting the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of your favorite historical figure with the reference to diktat?
I’m still waiting for Sir Simon. Or Manfred Honeck; he did a wonderful Vienna-ish New Years concert with the Czech Philharmonic last year (better than the VPO’s, IMHO).
The one time Honeck conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, the program included the overture to Die Fledermaus and it was tremendous. I had never heard the Philadelphians sound so Viennese before or since.
Simon Rattle conducting the VPO in Strauss?
Gives me a headache just thinking about it, and I LOVE Strauss.
How many years will it take to have the New Year’s Day Concert led a conductor steeped in Viennese tradition. In that sense, Manfred Honeck is perhaps the best qualified. Less so the usual suspects who keep rotating. I would think that musical qualifications for the New Year’s Day concert should matter more than gender. Evidently, the VPO’s criteria are neither about tradition, nor about gender.
I’d kind of like to have them go back to the concertmaster leading from the violin, ala Willi Boskovsky. Much as I understand why they go for the big-name conductor and have made this the ultimate prestige booking.
And the problem is……? An organization has autonomous rights, or it doesn’t. It seems there are growing numbers of people who think the only ‘rights’ people should have are to follow their own dictatorial ideologies.
The problem is that since Boskovsky’s retirement in 1978, there have been about a handful of New Year’s Day concerts of a similar calibre. In this context the priorities of the VPO seem to be purely commercial. They have the right to make their choices, we all have the right to our own tastes and opinions, though not to our own facts.
Unfortunately for Manfred Honeck and those who appreciate him, he will NEVER conduct the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Phil. Why? (1) He was once upon a time a member of the Vienna Phil and it is not easy for the present Phillys to accept the baton of a former member. (2) The “big deal” with the New Year’s Concert is to get a “BIG NAME” to preside over the show, i.e. conducting after the fact what the Vienna Phil. just played. (3) This would not work with Manfred Honeck, who is a kind person, a gentleman from tip to toe, but who knows what he is doing, and expects the orchestra – regardless of what orchestra that may be – to play what he is conducting. If anyone wants to hear 100% Strauß or 100% Strauss, just give a listen to Maestro Honeck conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. That will set your toes taping and you’ll be swaying in time to the music. The Pittsburgh Orchestra literally worships the ground the Maestro walks on and the rave reviews from his “much overdue” debut at the Met bear proof to the fact that Manfred Honeck is one of the most underrated, if not THE MOST UNDERRATED conductor of our time!
I generally agree.
Honeck is not a household name, but a connoisseur’s choice. After all, does any other living conductor keep turning up CDs with insightful interpretations of works from the 19th century classical canon, and keep winning awards?
Moreover, the Pittsburgh Symphony is easily among the most underrated orchestras. Probably nothing new about this: so I think whenever I listen to any of their brilliant recordings under William Steinberg (another underrated conductor?).
If I am not mistaken Simone Young conducted them in the pit at the Staatsoper in 1993, so she should qualify.
Simone is a very fine conductor and very musically intelligent person. She has lots of runs on the board.
Froschauer is talking mainly about the subscription concerts, where the VPO choose the conductor themselves. The list of people who conduct VPO concerts on a regular basis does not include any women at the moment. Currently, Mallwitz is probably the most likely to get into that group due to her work in Salzburg.
The State Opera is used more to scout for potential subscription conductors. If conducting there made you eligible, a lot of half decent opera conductors of the last decades would be. To be clear, this is not meant as a slight to Simone Young, she just doesn’t have a working relationship with the VPO, having only ever conducted them in 3 concerts in 2005.
Why not…Marin Alsop?
The actual tradition is for the waltzes to be led by a Stehgeiger like the orchestra’s concertmaster, Willi Boskovsky, who led the new years concerts from 1955 until his retirement in 1971. The waltzes are to be fun and somewhat informal. To blow this up into the sort of exclusivity the VPO claims is just one of their typical rationalizations for continuing very unfortunate traditions of bigotry. And of course, the principle motivation is that the concerts are big money so they want to use name brand conductors. The orchestra’s continues its spurious jargon of “authenticity” when its real motivations are bigotry and money.
Below is a video of Boskovsky conducting the new years concert. Note how different the orchestra sounded in 1966 and how today much of its sound and style are international–another consideration when discussing authenticity. Note also all the silliness in the concert, which is presumably much too important for a woman conductor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gxMtpWuBMY
Are you going to ignore the origins of the New Year’s concerts under Clemens Krauss, who took these waltzes so seriously he considered the younger J. Strauss to be one of the greatest composers?
I was about to state just that. Krauss was the original conductor of these concerts. (Stehgeiger presided at events people danced to). I actually spoke with folks who attended Carlos Kleiber’s New Year’s Concert in ’89 (including one of my old Music Academy professors), who said they hadn’t heard anything as good since Krauss. – Nonetheless it is true that today, and ever since the huge commercial success of Boskovsky’s concerts, it has mostly been a business venture. And what orchestra would not keep going in that way, if it was playing the most watched classical music event in the world? (According to the official numbers, the 2015 concert was seen by 50 million viewers.) They started tv broadcasts of it in 1959. Oh, another detail: the conductor of the first concert officially called the “Neujahrskonzert” was Josef Krips. (The very first such concert was actually initiated by Goebbels, in 1940…) Krauss started many of the traditions that are still carried on, like including the Blue Danube Waltz. As usual with things Viennese, the history is complicated…
Just catching up with this. No, I’m not ignoring Krauss. His pompous collaboration with the Nazis regarding the New Years Concert is just irrelevant to the Stehgeiger tradition I discuss. Trying to make an issue of him in this context is typical of how people try to throw in irrelevant facts to obfuscate the troubling points that are often made about the orchestra–in this case about the foolish rationalizations for excluding women conductors.
Krauss’ shady and mixed dealings with the Nazis, however, do make him an interesting figure regarding the VPO’s history. Especially notable is how Krauss agreed to direct the Berlin State Opera in 1935 after Erich Kleiber had resigned in protest against National Socialist government policies. Krauss offered aid to Jews trying to escape, but at the same time, he was not exactly a man of integrity. He symbolizes the difficulties of people living under murderous authoritarianism.
Unlike greed in any context, silliness at the New Year’s Day Concert is good, especially if in good taste. What do you mean about silliness being “much too important for a woman conductor”?
I was being sarcastic about the VPO’s claim that somehow women conductors don’t qualify for what is essentially a pops concert blown up into a virtual concept of cultural if not racial and gender superiority.
10 years – pfff for a couple of Waltzes and Polkas? Don‘t be ridiculous!
Susanna Mälkki should do it – or Marin Alsop – or Simone Young – or Oksana Lyniv – or Joanna Mallwitz
My daughter recently made this 3 part documentary for Dutch TV, about the problems facing women trying to gain recognition as a conductor. Well worth watching.
https://www.avrotros.nl/klassiek/item/vrouwen-op-de-bok/
Many thanks to your gifted daughter.
“Gentle progress” is a euphemism for “dragging its heels.” No excuse for any orchestra that has a dozen women on stage and considers that a healthy state of affairs.
Sad that this organization travels around the globe as a cultural ambassador for Vienna and people (including critics) mostly shrug it off.