Just in: Vienna Philharmonic hands baton to a woman
NewsBreaking 180 years of male exclusivity, the Vienna Philharmonic has finally asked a woman to conduct one of its closely-guarded subscription concerts.
Next year, on May 3, Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla will break 180 years of misogyny.
No further details yet, but it’s the final hurdle before we see a woman invited to conduct on New Year’s Day.
Mirga, 37, is former music director of the City of Biirmingham Symphony Orchestra. She lives is Salzburg, raising a young family.
What happened recently? All male conductors became less talented?
Oh totally. It is a woke conspiracy.
50 percent of women conductors are better than 50 percent of male conductors. So, yeah, suddenly people are noticing that some of the women are a lot better than some of the men.
Before Civil War broke out: My comment was not ment to be a criticism against woman conductors. It ment to be a criticism of trends.
Just as good. They as a collective group are not better but equally as good.
Boo. Hoo.
The majority of male conductors have been mediocre
That goes especially for the majority of people in general.
They players are good enough to get her through it, whatever the programme will be.
Exactly so, Sally. M G-T seems never to actually ‘lead’ performances (in the USA sense of ‘leading’, i.e. conducting.) IMHO what she usually does is to act out an attractive choreography and beat time to what is already happening.
Ridiculous comment.
Unfortunately this is the truth. Ask the orchestras.
There is a joke about the VPO and conductors:
Conductor X was scheduled to conduct the VPO. Someone asks one the VPO musicians: “What is he going to conduct?”. The musician answer: “I am not sure what he is going to conduct, but we are going to play ….”
Going by my experience, admittedly from the 1980s, this is a huge overstatement. As a student, I had the privilege of hearing the VPO live many times, mostly under very famous conductors. The results ranged from dull to sublime. Notably, under Karajan I heard their version of the Karajan sound—not as homogenized (Karajanized) as the BPO sound back then.
I heard that Karajan/VPO sound too at Carnegie Hall in Bruckner 8. Definitely his own sound – you can also clearly hear it at the beginning of Music of the Spheres when he did the NY concert. Absolutely gorgeous.
I agree about the Karajan sound. Too bad back then I was partly an angry a young man, who turned off by Karajan’s aura and public persona.
I could also recognize the Sinopoli phrasing in early Verdi—Attila, Macbeth. Of course Sinopoli has his detractors, and I personally believe he had no shortage of weak links. But he drew a distinctive playing from the VPO at the opera, and it was mostly beautiful and gripping.
So I roll my eyes when reading arguments about the VPO being aple to play like Gods in their sleep. Sometimes they did play as if they were sleepwalking, and it was nothing like their highly regarded recordings.
I believe milk is the only thing that should be homogenised, unless you feel uniformity is to be a valued characteristic of orchestras going into the future…? (=
I prefer unhomogenized milk over homogenized.
Ditto for orchestral sound. I love the transparency in Fricsay’s and Szell’s recordings, to name just two conductors born within about a decade of Karajan.
But it is hard to deny the beauty of the Karajan sound.
Joe Biden could conduct the orchestra it would still sound good
Oh please. Spare us – these threads are already trying as it is.
They wouldn’t sound good anymore under Cadet Bone Spurs. He would f.. it up as everything he did in his life as a con man.
The players are good enough to get through anything. Christian Theileman. For example.
You can’t even spell Thielemann. Tells us how much respect we should accord to your posts………..
Apologies but he is not worth the effort. Bliatrd performance after performance.
I heard him a few times, always very very good and occasionally sublime. One of the few conductors around who actually cares about sound. His Hansel and Gretel at the Vienna State Opera was absolutely gorgeous as was his Palestrina in NY about 25 years ago. Last year’s Bruckner 8 with the VPO was almost as good as Karajan. Almost.
In the “almost” lies the difference.
OK so if everyone has to be as good as HVK we’re going to have a VERY short list and I was referring only to the Bruckner 8 and that performance in particular. HVK’s last three minutes of the opening movement is among the most exciting and compelling musical experiences of my life so I never expect to hear that equalled…………
Mirga is actually good enough to get most orchestras through whatever programme there may be!
Before some hardcore feminists get their panties wet here: Simone Young conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in subscription concerts already years ago.
That’s absolutely disgusting. But thank you for illustrating how casually the accomplishments of women are erased.
East Germany….what can you mach??? Low level of education.
Simone Young conducted the orchestra in 2005, Joana Mallwitz in 2020, 2021, 2022 and Jan 2024. Are you doing any research before writing the article?
[redacted] you have just ceased to be a commenter
Fair enough, Norm was talking about subscription concerts, and Mallwitz was leading them only in opera performances as well as during the Mozartwoche in Salzburg. But yet he is wrong, as Simone Young acutally did conduct them in subscription concerts in the mid 2000s and also later.
For what it’s worth, the Simone Young concerts that appear in the VPO concerts dabase are not subscription.
No, Simone Young’s concerts were in the Wiener Konzerthaus (not Musikverein) and weren’t subscription concerts.
No
There ar a lot of excellent options around for that moment – and they take her? They should really start to invite conductors who can give them a run for their money! Petrenko et al – sadly a cancellation recently (and they fell back in their comfort zone immediately – it would be cheaper to install a photo of Thielemann for his admirers and the ticket sale and play the whole thing alone – they tend to do exactly that anyways)!
How could the VPO have overlooked Alondra de la Parra? They would have so much fun playing Marquez’s Danzon #2. There would also be important upside as well because Alondra could actually *perform* the Dance of the Seven Veils while conducting selections from Salome.
Another dancer. And everything well behind the orchestra. Grief.
Aside from the appallingly sexist last comment , Alondra de La Parra isn’t even on the same planet as Mirga on any level .
Wonderful news. Perhaps progress is possible, even in a bastion of diehard conservatism (expecting the usual sexist trolls to come out of the woodwork now).
No sexism necessary, but you talk about conservatism as if it were a bad thing regarding classical music. Have you given it some thought what classical music is?
“There are two kind of fools. Those who think something is new and therefore better, and those who think something is old and therefore better.”
I actually think of classical music as a story of radicalism – Beethoven’s Eroica, Berlioz’s Sinfonie Fantastique, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Reich’s Four Organs, and the list goes on. All statements of continuous progress and bold adventure – as all great art forms are.
The real progress with the Neujahrskonzert will be if they abandon their now 45-year tradition of mostly choosing conductors based on fame and bond with the VPO. If only they chose conductors are steeped in the Viennese style. Even here on SD, the names that keep coming up are Kleiber, Karajan and Harnoncourt—for good reasons. Thielemann also understands the style, not least because he cut his teeth in operetta, but is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Well at least they won’t be doing any more concerts with Kleiber, Karajan or Harnoncourt. Unless they can raise the dead.
We’re going to have a holographic projection conduct a live concert performance sometime in the next 5-7 years. Mark my words. The Dead shall rise.
Who cares?
Well I might give it a thought, if I were living on Mars in a space capsule.
Let’s look aback at the histroy of the VPO New Years concerts.The concerts were the invention of Austrian conductor Clemens Kraus in 1939 to honor a composer so ingrained in the musical life of Vienna, that they conveniently forgot he was partly Jewish. After the War, in 1946, Austrian-Jewish conductor Josef Krips returned from America and led the concerts until 1955 when VPO concertmaster Austrian violinist Willi Boskovsky took over the podium until 1979. Now Willi, who had been concertmaster of the VPO since 1939 was complicit in some of the muck that went on during the war, but was so charming and Viennese in character that it really never slowed him down. French born American Jewish violinist/violist/conductor Lorin Maazel then took over the annual concerts until 1986 when they decided to rotate it amongst their regular conductors and Austrian former NSDP member Herbert v. Karajan took the podium for New Years, 1987. By 1989, ORF bought the rights to broadcast the concerts world-wide on television and beamed the feed to networks who bought in all over the world. With the broadcast, the networks wanted to see a new top conductor every year, so it has run that way ever since. Keep in mind, Austria does not give into the diversity situation in the same way as other European countries, so I don’t expect a female conductor for some time. Perhaps, the only one with major international status in the same way as the males is Marin Alsop and she’s not performed with them despite being the Director of the Vienna Radio Symphony. So there you go…..Franz Welser-Most is as close as they come these days to an Austrian conductor leading the concerts and he’s done it three times between 2011 and 2023.
Comprehensive and accurate. Two qualities so rarely encountered on SD………..
I’d like to see Honeck — he’s got the Viennese musical accent, too.
It’s not going to happen, he used to be a Viola player in the orchestra. Too bad actually, he is a good conductor, when he doesn’t try to imitate Kleiber.
Well, Alsop was a disaster at the Radio Symphony. But your comment is good. Vienna style is missing these days with Thielemann, Nelsons etc. FWM, although rather dull, at least understand Vienna music.
Couldn’t they have picked a better female conductor?
They are all on the same low level.
I have to respectfully disagree, at least about Emmanuelle Haim in baroque music. Beyond her admirable work Le Concert d’Astrée, she guest conducts prestigious modern orchestras. This includes the Berlin Phil, repeatedly, and even the Vienna Phil (2016) though not at subscription concerts, a detail duly celeberated in the above blogpost, as always with anything about Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla.
Boy that’s a broad brush!
GDR bull. Karina Canellakis is fantastic, one of the best i played under in 45 years. Same with Susanna Mälkki….
Yes agree as a listener. You can add in Scappucci to the list……….
A thumbs down from someone who could not possibly have attended her Rondine recently at the Met………..
Yes indeed. It was brilliant!
Any of those thumbs down armchair conductors haven´t heard any conductor born after 1950.Let alone played under one.
I attended it and it was terrible. The orchestra tried to play without looking at her, so it somehow worked. Many musicians told me that she simply lacks the technique. She used to be a great coach though. This is the level of many Met conductors now…
@John Kelly: Scappucci? She might be able to get through basic symphonic repertoire without crashing and burning but she’s hopeless in the pit.
JoAnn Falletta and Susanna Malkki are amongst the finest conductors around today, male, female or otherwise.
Sexist comment. How sad this still exists.
Agree. She totally lacks any structural grasp of a score. This works with some short duration lighter fare, but definitely not with large scale works. Look at Karina Cannelakis, who has an absolute mastery of large scale works (Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius, Wagner and Janacek operas, Widmann Arche). Or Susanna Mälkki!
Truly among the 10 most interesting podium personalities of today.
And there are many more in the making. Recently I played in a concert under Anna Rakitina. Excellent! Marie Jacquot and Ariana Mathak are also really good. All of those have a background of playing in a high level orchestra. MGT hasn’t. I played quite often under her in her early years, and I never felt any connection or rapport with the orchestra.
Yeh, what’s wrong with Elim Chan?
She’s very stern according to my friends in Chicago. Not that that’s a bad thing.
Didn’t Simone Young conduct them in 2005?
And later as well.
Yes. The above headline is misleading: the VPO has already “handed a baton” to a woman. I believe, however, that the blogpost is factually correct in pointing out that Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla is the first woman to conduct a subscription concert.
The latter was not the case with the two women I know to have already conducted the VPO on other occasions: Simone Young in 2005, at the Vienna Konzerthaus, and Emmanuelle Haim in 2016, at Lucerne and at the Theater an der Wien. The events are easily traceable at VPO website.
There may be more who have conducted the same musicians at the Vienna State Opera.
Well, I’m on my way to Vienna now that it is a safe haven from misogyny! I grew up watching operas at the Met conducted by such male chauvinists as Karajan, Böhm, Schippers, Prêtre, Levine… how did they ever DARE doing this to us?!?!?! But at least I have lived long enough to see the likes of Scappucci et al learn their rep on the audience’s time. If only Maestra Sarah Caldwell were still with us to show us how to fall asleep while conducting the last-act Traviata prelude …..
Scappucci is 50 years old. She assisted Muti and “learned her rep” in numerous theatres in Italy over many years, something that can rarely be said about other Met conductors………….with predictably excellent results in Rondine. Read her background. Do your homework as Bernstein might say…..
She’s a good continuo player and probably rep too, but conducting is not her bag.
The lament of the goners….
How wonderfully trendy.
And as is the case with trends, they pass at some point.
Yeah, like the GDR, male chauvinism, and other fads.
No further details yet?
Here we go:
Raminta Šerkšnytė
Midsummer Song. Für Streicher und optionalem Schlagwerk
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky
Konzert für Klavier Nr. 1 in b-Moll, op. 23
Jean Sibelius
Lemminkäinen und die Mädchen auf der Insel, aus Lemminkäinen-Suite, op. 22
Jean Sibelius
Der Schwan von Tuonela, aus Lemminkäinen-Suite, op. 22
Jean Sibelius
Lemminkäinen zieht heimwärts, aus Lemminkäinen-Suite, op. 22
Why don´t they perform the whole Lemminkäinen Suite, leaving out the shattering mvt.Lemminkäinen in Tuonela?Makes no sense.
And with Yuja, no less! Now, I suppose we must endure the usual Yuja bashing from those who only watch concerts rather than listening to brilliant performances.
MG-T used to be a favorite–dare one say darling?–of SD until she flew the British coop. Nice to see her getting attention again, though accompanied by the usual nasty comments.
Saw Mirga many times conducting L.A. Phil, a very showy and ostentatious maestra.
When is VPO going to have a full-Asian or black female player? Just kidding, I believe these cultural institutions and traditions are being destroyed by the political progressives and Woke-ism and it shows in the deteriorating musical sounds. Imagine going to China and Japan and demand ‘diversity and inclusivity’.
China already has that. There are several Europeans in their orchestras.
Don’t be fooled. China and Japan only hire white principal players and conductors for ‘prestige’ and nothing else.
Visual show aside, how did the LAPO sound under Mirga? How were the interpretations, especially in slow movements?
Wow – are you actually asking someone to listen as opposed to watch? Good luck.
She, as most of the younger conductors, is unable to properly conduct slow movements.
Look, the world moves on. Our art form doesn’t need retrograde, misogynistic, racist neanderthals pulling us back into the 19th century. Get over your obsession with “woke” this and “woke” that. It’s getting tiresome.
Without wishing to align myself with all the usual misogynist trolls there is a point to be made here. Quite simply she is not really that good a conductor. She appears to be a genuinely pleasant person and must know a fair bit to get this far. However, her choreographic, overheated style would be completely out of place in Vienna. They’ll play it perfectly without taking much notice of course but I’m always reminded of the possibly apocryphal comment in a London orchestra of many years ago -“If you’re not careful maestro, we’ll play what you’re conducting!”
That’s actually very funny.
Or, as Sir Colin Davis said to the LSO: “Ladies and Gentlemen, how can I possibly follow you if you insist on not playing together?!”
Dragonetti wrote, “[Mirga’s] choreographic, overheated style would be completely out of place in Vienna”.
Those adjectives could also be applied to Leonard Bernstein. The VPO loved him, and most of his greatest performances, especially of Mahler, were with that orchestra. I’m really looking forward to hearing Mirga’s debut with them.
Antwerp:
I suspect LB had an awful lot of ideas and things to say to the VP.
MTG doesn’t.
Once orchestras realise this, they make their own rehearsals and performances, while she dances around.
Working for her for the first time, I was quite shocked how bad she was.
Time is up!
Dragonetti: Without wishing to align myself with all the usual misogynist trolls there is a point to be made here.
—-
“Misogynist,” “sexist,” “racist,” “xenophobe,” “homophobe,” etc, are now so caught up in politics, that the meaning of those words is now very much in the eye of the beholder.
Notice the way that women, non-whites, non-straights, non-natives (immigrants), etc, will be judged very differently depending on whether their ideology is of the political left or political right.
It’s now so hair-splitting, that even people like author Joanne K Rowling get caught in the crosshairs.
Do orchestras that play the standard repetoire need a conductor?
Not if you want a boring performance.
Ohh boy….
One of my favorite people — well spoken, beautful sensitivity, appreciative of the musicians. Mirga is a treasure.
Says the poser, convicted wife beater, and swindler
The beginning of the end…don’t they see what happened in Birmingham after she was hired?!
What happened in Birmingham that is relevant for the VPO?
Is yr real name Mozart.
Hardly mysogyny, it was their tradition and a damned good one at that!
It is about time for a change Gratulation to the Orchestra
She is an awful conductor.
Not as bad as Christian Tillman
Oh Donna. That certainly isn’t true.
Why must we have the sexist language: ‘Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla will break 180 years of misogyny’? Just say she will be the first woman to conduct. No need for the aggression.
I have a live recording of Gražinyte-Tyla with the Basel Symphony Orchestra, playing Beethoven Symphony 4…It’s exciting and beautifully played.
She indeed was better when in Basel, I saw her a couple of time there. But then she got more and more showy and “energetic”.
That’s the orchestra.
It wasn’t long ago that the orchestra was only male. She is one of many outstanding female musicians to conduct. Congratulations Maestra!
Why is it noteworthy that she is raising a young family? Do you mention it when male conductors have young families?
Kirsty.
Yes, it is noteworthy.
She has made it a part of her professional identity. Her time away from conducting to become a mother, taking her children on tour, being a ‘role model’ etc etc etc. Her cancelled work too, all held up as modern model of a strong, women conductor. All the above are all mentioned in other articles and profiles in Arts pages of world papers.
If a Dad/conductor did this, he’d be told to ‘shut up/get on with it/stop virture signalling/women do this all the time’.
It would have been more “stunning and brave” if she was a woman of color who identifies as a midget, non-binary attack helicopter.
It’s a great, profound, most puzzling mystery why a private orchestra the players of which had preferred to work only with men, are forced by public opinion and social justice wars to bend their ways, while all over the world symphony orchestras and whatever kind of ensembles are not interested in ‘only men’ constitution, so that female players have an ocean of chances to work in whatever other orchestra. Only ONE orchestra wanted to not be distracted by the feminine, and they were scolded for it, labelled ‘reactionary’, ‘conservative’, ‘mysoginist’, etc. etc.
Football clubs, London clubs, truck drivers unions, mandoline ensembles, feminist war gangs, soldiers, have no problems with a ‘one-sex’ constitution, but orchestras – oh dear.
In a world where orchestras no longer bar women, there is nothing against ONE band who would like to be an all-male one. Female mandoline ensembles have no such problems because women were not barring men in the past. The whole discussion is a projection of historic prejudice still fully active, only into the opposite direction.
And then, the Me Too Movement has unearthed numerous stories of serious problems between the sexes in a mixed orchestra, of which Gatti’s being fired from the Concertgebouw Orchestra is only one recent example. Such occasions should throw a new light upon so-called ‘conservative’ constitutions as had, till recently, the VPO. If there were an all-women symphony orchestra today, led by a woman auf dem Pult, nobody would complain.
She looks remarkably physically weak and ineffectual. A conductor who has to rely on psychological or emotional control of players only is not someone I could pay attention to.