=46riday, February 27, 1998
Los Angeles Times
Women still need not apply. Ditto for people of color.
Twelve months after reluctantly ending its 155-year ban against female
musicians because of pressure from Austrian and American feminists, the
renowned Vienna Philharmonic continues to thumb its nose at players who
are not white males, its critics contend.
The National Organization for Women says the orchestra remains dedicated to =
"a
racist and misogynist philosophy," notwithstanding the admission of harpist =
Anna
Lelkes one year ago today as the first (and only) woman with full
membership in the
organization.
NOW and the International Alliance for Women in Music, which mounted
demonstrations against the orchestra last winter in Orange County and New
York City
on its 1997 U.S. tour, have called for renewed protests tonight at Manhattan=
's
Carnegie Hall, where the globe-trotting Viennese musicians give the first
of three
concerts this weekend.
Meanwhile, Sonja Ablinger, a member of the Austrian parliament, said Wednesd=
ay
from Vienna that the orchestra has resorted to sly maneuvers and sham
procedures in
hiring practices covertly designed to discourage women from applying.
"These men are making difficulties," the 31-year-old Social Democrat said. "=
They
do everything to keep women out. They change the rules. They create new
obstacles.
I would say half of the orchestra is very anti-women--still."
The evidence, she and others assert, is the philharmonic's most recent
attempt to
fill four positions--solo viola, solo cello, second violin and tuba--for
which 35 women
requested auditions. Fourteen were invited to try out last December; five
showed up
and were deemed unsuitable.
Twenty-one were denied auditions--including one violist, Gertrude Rossbacher=
,
who was born and trained in Vienna and hired in 1987 for the Berlin
Philharmonic by
its legendary conductor, Herbert von Karajan.
The following year, at 27, Rossbacher became the second woman ever granted f=
ull
membership in that orchestra. When she applied last April to the Vienna
Philharmonic,
officials told her she was too old; she was 35.
Philharmonic spokesman Wolfgang Schuster did not return phone calls. Orchest=
ra
Chairman Clemens Hellsberg, elected last May as a progressive who favors cha=
nge,
told the Austrian newspaper Der Kurier earlier this week: "I'm not in the
mood to talk
about the auditions for women anymore."
Since 1981 the Vienna Philharmonic has said that it might eventually accept
female
players but that "change takes time." In spite of Lelkes' appointment (at
age 57), the
orchestra's pace seems no faster now: Three of the most recent open
positions went to
men; the fourth remains unfilled.
"When they took Ms. Lelkes everybody was so enthusiastic!" said Elena
Ostleitner, a leading musicologist at Vienna's Academy of Music. "There was
absolutely no reason to be so happy and so proud. It was a tiny little
success. There
haven't been any since."
The Vienna Philharmonic, with 148 men and one female member, has one of the
music world's worst records for gender bias. Among the major Central Europea=
n
orchestras within a 300-mile radius of Vienna, women constitute less than
7% at each.
"The fact that the Vienna Philharmonic doesn't take women is actually good
for us
because we get them," says Gabriela Mossyrch, chairwoman of Vienna's Volksop=
er,
a major exception to the rule with 25 women and 70 men.
U.S. orchestras generally do better than their European counterparts--here w=
omen
hold about 36% of the seats--"because of more rigorous equal-opportunity
measures,"
Harvard University researcher Erin Lehman said. Even so, five major
orchestras--in
Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Boston--have current or
recently
settled gender-related lawsuits.
Harvard economist Claudia Goldin and Princeton University's Cecilia Rouse ha=
ve
found that blind auditions--a procedure the Vienna Philharmonic refuses to
use in final
rounds--increase the chances for women. When a screen is used to keep candid=
ates
hidden from view, their success in initial auditions at U.S. orchestras
improves by
50%, and in the final rounds by 300%.
The Vienna Philharmonic's gender bias is compounded by a historical racist
legacy
that chairman Hellsberg himself has acknowledged. Some observers, such as He=
inz
Roegel, a Viennese music journalist for the Salzburger Nachrichten, cites
Hellsberg's
openness on the subject as a positive sign.
In "Democracy of Kings," a book Hellsberg wrote to celebrate the orchestra's
150th anniversary in 1992, he pointed out that well before 1938, 47% of its
then-members joined the Nazi party when it was illegal to do so in Austria.
Six players, Hellsberg noted, were Jewish and died in concentration camps;
another 11 were able to escape through timely immigration; and nine were
found to be
of "mixed race" or "contaminated by kinship" and were reduced in status.
After Austria was annexed by Germany, the orchestra performed at the Nazi Pa=
rty
Days in Nuremberg in 1938; Hitler was so taken by the performance that he
promised
the orchestra his personal protection and asked it to be a yearly fixture at=
the
Nuremberg rallies.
"It thus became part of the central paradigm of National Socialist cultural
ritual,"
ays William Osborne, an American composer who lives in Germany and has writ=
ten
numerous scholarly articles on the history of the orchestra.
Given that legacy and the fact that the orchestra is regarded today as one
of the
pinnacles of Western musical culture, Osborne argued in a recent phone
interview that
the philharmonic is under a special obligation to redress the past and open
its ranks to
the best musicians, regardless of race or gender.
"The Vienna Philharmonic possesses immense power," he said. "It is the world=
's
best-selling orchestra. Its annual New Year's concerts are seen by 1.2
million people
worldwide."
He points out that Hellsberg has said that "there is already too much wearin=
ess
with democracy in Austria" and that he does not want to force the issue of
integration.
That is not merely a rhetorical phrase, Osborne notes. "In the last national
elections, the Neo-Nazi Freedom Party got 23% of the vote. 'Weariness with
democracy' is code for the right wing's authoritarian, racist credo.
"Little Austria--which for better or worse is never going to give up
certain touches
of its empire mentality--can't make too many cannons," Osborne said.
"But it certainly can field several orchestras that cut a wide swath," he
added. "The
philharmonic ought to use its influence wisely."
Nina Benkotich, an assistant in The Times Vienna bureau, contributed to
this report.
______________________________
Monique Buzzart=E9 buzzarte@dorsai.org
http://www.dorsai.org/~buzzarte