Vienna Philharmonic

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The Vienna Philharmonic (VPO; German: Wiener Philharmoniker), founded in 1842, is an orchestra, regularly considered one of the finest in the world.

The Vienna Philharmonic is based in the Musikverein in Vienna. The members of the orchestra are chosen from the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. This process is a long one, with each musician having to prove his or her capability for a minimum of three years' playing for the opera and ballet. Once this is achieved the musician can then ask the board of the Vienna Philharmonic to consider an application for a position in the orchestra.

History

Precursors and formation

Until the 1830s, orchestral performance in Vienna was done by ad hoc orchestras, consisting of professional and (often) amateur musicians brought together for specific performances. In 1833, Franz Lachner formed the forerunner of the Vienna Philharmonic, the Künstlerverein – an orchestra of professional musicians from the Vienna Court Opera (Wiener Hofoper, now theVienna State Opera); it gave four concerts, each including a Beethoven symphony. The Vienna Philharmonic itself arose nine years later, in 1842, hatched by "a group who met regularly at the inn 'Zum Amor' [including] the poet Nikolaus Lenau, [newspaper editor] August Schmidt, [critic] Alfred Becker, [violinist] Karlz Holz, Count Laurecin, and Otto Nicolai" (the composer, also the principal conductor of a standing orchestra at a Viennese theater). Mosco Carner wrote in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "Nicolai was the least enthusiastic about the idea, and had to be persuaded by the others; he conducted the first [concert] on 28 March 1842." The orchestra was fully independent, consisted of members of the Hofoper orchestra, and made all of its decisions by a democratic vote of its members; it had its day-to-day management handled by a democratically elected body, the administrative committee. The orchestra still follows these principles today.

Nicolai and the orchestra gave only 11 concerts in the ensuing five years, and when Nicolai left Vienna in 1847, the orchestra nearly folded (New Grove notes the disruption caused by the Revolution of 1848 as a hindrance). Between 1854 and 1857 Karl Eckert – the first permanent conductor of the Vienna Court Opera (Wiener Hofoper, now the Vienna State Opera )– led the (associated) Vienna Philharmonic in a few concerts. In 1857, Eckert was made Director of the Hofopera – the first musician to have been given the post.); in 1860, he conducted four subscription concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic. Since that time, writes Vienna Philharmonic violinist and president Clemens Hellsberg, "the 'Philharmonic Concerts' have been staged without interruption."

The era of subscription conductors: 1860–1933

In 1860, the orchestra elected Otto Dessoff to be permanent conductor. According to Max Kalbeck, the Vienna-based music critic, newspaper editor, and biographer, the fame and excellence of the Vienna Philharmonic resulted from Dessoff's "energy and sense of purpose." Clemens Hellsberg gives specifics, writing that during the Dessoff years, the Vienna Philharmonic's "repertoire was consistently enlarged, important organizational principles (music archives, rules of procedure) were introduced and the orchestra moved to its third new home [in 1870], the newly built Goldener Saal in the Musikverein building in Vienna [in which it still performs], which has proved to be the ideal venue, with its acoustical characteristics influencing the orchestra's style and sound." After fifteen years, in 1875, Dessoff was "pushed out of his position in Vienna through intrigue", and he left Vienna to become conductor (Hofkapellmeister) of the Badische Staatskapelle in Karlsruhe, Germany. In Karlruhe the next year, he fulfilled the request of his friend Johannes Brahms to conduct the first performance of his Symphony no. 1; in 1873 Brahms had conducted the premiere of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn with Dessoff's Vienna Philharmonic.

In 1875, the orchestra chose Hans Richter to take Dessoff's place as subscription conductor. He remained until 1898, except for the season 1882/1883 when he was in dispute with the orchestral committee (during this hiatus, Wilhelm Jahn of the Vienna Court Opera served as subscription conductor). Richter led the VPO in the world premieres of Brahms's Second Symphony (in 1877), Tragic Overture (in 1880), and Symphony no. 3 (in 1883), the Violin Concerto of Tchaikovsky in 1881, and in 1892 the 8th symphony of Anton Bruckner. It was Richter who in 1881 appointed Arnold Rosé as concertmaster, who was to become Gustav Mahler's brother-in-law and was concertmaster until the Anschluss in 1938. In order to be eligible for a pension, Richter intended to remain in his position for 25 years (to 1900), and might have done so, given that the orchestra unanimously re-elected him in May 1898. But he resigned on September 22, citing health reasons, although biographer Christopher Fifield argues that the real reasons were that he wanted to tour, and that "he was uneasy as claques in the audience formed in favour of Gustav Mahler" (who was triumphing as director of the Hofoper). Richter recommended Mahler or Ferdinand Löwe to the orchestra as his replacement.

In 1898, on September 24, the orchestra elected Gustav Mahler. (On 30 May 1899, pro-Mahler and pro-Richter factions had a "heated committee meeting"; matters were finally resolved in August when Richter wrote to his supporters "gently refusing their offer".) Under Mahler's baton the Vienna Philharmonic played abroad for the first time at the 1900 Paris World Exposition. While Mahler had strong supporters in the orchestra, he faced dissension from other orchestral members (an unreconstructed pro-Richter faction plus an anti-Semitic one, according to Jens Malte Fischer), criticism of his re-touchings of Beethoven, and arguments with the orchestra and over new policies he imposed; ultimately, "his working relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic continued to be fueled by resentment and broke down completely in November 1900". He resigned on 1 April 1901, like Richter, citing health concerns as a pretext, but continuing to conduct actively elsewhere (he remained director of the associated Hofoper until 1907).

In 1901, Joseph Hellmesberger, Jr. briefly took his place; he remained only until 1903.

Vienna Philharmonic at the rehearsal, Felix Weingartner is conducting. Engraving by Ferdinand Schmutzer (1926)

In 1908, after an interval with no official subscription conductor, the orchestra elected Felix Weingartner to the post; he was to remain in it until 1927, and conducted at least 432 concerts with them in total, including the VPO's first tour of South America in 1922. Weingartner's interpretive stance was opposite to Mahler's (Mahler employed marked tempo fluctuations in Beethoven, whereas Weingartner decried "tempo rubato conductors"); but like Mahler, he considered himself primarily a composer, and between 1910 and 1923 led the orchestra in at least one piece of his own music per season. He was most renowned for his Beethoven – he programmed at least two symphonies per season, and complete cycles in 1916/17 and 1926/27. It was Weingartner who led the orchestra's first concert devoted to entirely to the music of Johann Strauss, Jr. (for the composer's centennial), on October 25, 1925.

In 1927, when Weingartner resigned, the orchestra elected Wilhelm Furtwängler. He resigned at the end of the 1929/30 season because of increased professional demands in Berlin.

In 1930, the orchestra chose Clemens Krauss for the position. At the Salzburg Festival in the summers of 1929–33 he led the orchestra in an annual Strauss waltz concert, the forerunners of the New Year's Day concerts he was later to institute. Krauss left in 1933 to become director of the Berlin State Opera (after Erich Kleiber resigned that position to protest Nazi rule).

1933 through 1945

Since 1933, the orchestra has had no single subscription conductor, but according to New Grove (vol. 19, p. 723), "between 1933 and 1938, Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler shared the Philharmonic concerts between them, and during the Nazi period Furtwängler was the permanent conductor"; by contrast, the Vienna Philharmonic's website history says, "Furtwängler was in actuality the main conductor of the orchestra from 1933 to 1945, and again from 1947 to 1954." In support of New Grove 's assertion of Walter's role, it might be noted that he made Vienna his home from 1933 until 1938 (after being driven from Germany by the Third Reich), was Artistic Director of the Vienna State Opera from 1936 until 1938, and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic frequently, making a number of major recordings with the orchestra (including Richard Wagner's Die Walküre act 1 and parts of act 2, the first recordings of Mahler'sDas Lied von der Erde and of his Symphony No. 9, and numerous symphonic recordings) and taking the orchestra on tour to England and France in 1935. In support of the VPO website, Otto Strasser (who played in the orchestra from 1922 until 1967 and was the VPO chairman who procured Furtwängler's wartime services) said, Furtwängler "influenced us so much that we became the true 'Furtwängler orchestra'.

Among other conductors to work with the orchestra in the mid-1930s before the Anschluss were Arturo Toscanini, Weingartner, Hans Knappertsbusch, Otto Klemperer, Adrian Boult, Victor de Sabata and George Szell. Walter conducted the last concert before the Anschluss, on February 20, 1938, featuring the world premiere of Egon Wellesz's Prosperos Beschwörungen and Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 (Bruckner).

After the Anschluss and during World War II the roster included Furtwängler, Krauss, Knappertsbusch, Willem Mengelberg, and Karl Böhm. The orchestra's history during this period has been a topic of ongoing discussion and research, including a large amount commissioned by the orchestra (see below, "#Period under National Socialism").