Change has come slowly for the Vienna Philharmonic, but there has been progress.
By
December 23, 2019
Women were first hired into a major orchestra in 1913, when six female violinists joined the Queen’s Hall Orchestra in London. But in Vienna, female musicians were not officially offered auditions to the philharmonic until more than eight decades later.
Today, 15 of the Vienna Philharmonic’s 145 permanent members are women, with four more going through the statutory transition period to becoming full members.
Vienna may be an egregious example of gender inequality in the classical music world. Yet it is not the only one. Another of the world’s top orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic, first admitted a woman in 1982, a century after it was founded.
The Vienna Philharmonic, established in 1842, has been weighed down by history and by tradition, and by a somewhat convoluted recruitment process. All players are recruited from the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. And until 1997, the opera would not allow women to audition for the philharmonic.
Once musicians pass the Vienna State Opera audition, they have a trial period lasting three years before becoming permanent members of the State Opera. It takes three more years to transition to membership in the philharmonic.
Daniel Froschauer, chairman of the self-governing Vienna Philharmonic and one of its first violinists, said he kept a close eye on auditions at the Vienna State Opera. Last year, he said, when four women were hired for the State Opera orchestra, they were chosen “not because they’re women: because they’re the very best players.”
Mr. Froschauer, 53, noted that next year, he would become the oldest member of the orchestra’s first violin section, as more and more senior players retired. The number of female musicians, he added, “is ever-growing.”
He also noted that Austria’s first female chancellor, Brigitte Bierlein, took office in June. “It’s a changing world, even in good old Vienna,” he said.
Women still make up less than half of most orchestras in Continental Europe. An August 2019 survey by two University College London academics showed that in Continental orchestras, 36.6 percent of members were women. In the United States, it was 40 percent, and in Britain, 44 percent.
“I don’t want to throw stones at Vienna, because all of us in classical music are in glass houses, in all questions of diversity,” said Gillian Moore, director of music at the Southbank Center in London, which includes the Royal Festival Hall.
“It’s clearly an odd thing to see an orchestra that is so predominantly male,” she said, referring to the Vienna Philharmonic. “I absolutely accept that they are making progress.”
The problem in classical music boils down to gender roles: what society and tradition allowed women to do, and how those roles endured.
(Please go here to read the article in the New York Times.)