The controversial writer, and critic of classical music, Norman Lebrecht, slaps a Sachertorte in the face of what passes for high society in Vienna in this week's Spectator. Apparently, all the, er, 'Great and Good' of Vienna gather together on the morning of every New Year's Day in the Musikvereinssaal concert hall and at 11.15am - precisely, verstehen! - the Vienna Philharmonic kicks off on a concert whose programme consists entirely of works by the Strauss family. Yeeeees, quite, and no, I'm not passing the sick bag because I might need it! As Lebrecht puts it, and he, unlike me, knows where-of he writes:
The music is strictly bar-room, written by members of the Strauss family as social foreplay for the soldiery and serving classes in low taverns. Like most forms of dirty dancing, the music rose vertically from barroom to ballroom and was soon performed as encores by symphonic orchestras to dowager purrs of wie schön.
The New Year’s Day concert is an annual jellybox of waltzes, polkas, galops, marches and any old tritsch-trash. It is watched by 60 million people in 90 countries, a triumph of brand marketing over musical substance, with a smiley tag of ‘hope, friendship and peace’. Its cultural value is equal to a double-dollop of tourist kitsch. Harmless, unless you are weight-watching.
Well, fair enough, all countries have their share of cultural oddities that are incomprehensible to outsiders but Mr. Lebrecht is not satisfied with merely giving the Strauss family a whack for inflicting 'cruel and unusual punishment' on Mankind, he is more concerned with the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra itself:
The tradition, however, is decidedly pernicious. This concert came into being as a gift to Nazi criminals, a cover for genocide. The Vienna Philharmonic was quick to sack Jewish and leftist musicians when Hitler came to town. More than a dozen were sent to concentration camps; seven of them perished. The orchestra unanimously endorsed the Anschluss with Germany, exhorted by the conductor Karl Böhm to declare ‘a 100 per cent “yes”’, and proved a willing executioner of cultural cleansing, removing Mahler and other giants from its walls and histories.
But racist revisionism yielded no instant reward. Vienna was downgraded by the Nazis to a provincial capital and the Philharmonic feared losing status. So the players went wooing Baldur von Schirach, the Vienna Gauleiter, a lover of music who would send 65,000 Viennese Jews to their deaths.
From 1941 the New Year's Day concert became an annual event under Nazi control. Post-war it continued but with its, er, unfortunate antecedents well buried! Alas, in 2013 some poke-nose historian dug up all the dirty washing and hung it out to dry:
The Nazi origins were suppressed until last year when a historian discovered that the Philharmonic had given its ring of honour to six mass-murderers, including Schirach; the butcher of Holland, Arthur Seyss-Inquart; and the head of Reich railways who ran the trains to Auschwitz. Those honours weren’t revoked until 2013 and some of the criminals could be seen attending Philharmonic concerts into the 1960s.
Old habits die hard, particularly in central Europe, and so today, despite there being a law against sexual discrimination there are only seven females playing in the orchestra amongst a roll-call of 130 players. Asian and female winners of competitions that earn them the right to play with the Vienna Operatic orchestra are forbidden to play with the Viennese Philharmonic. Apparently they have faced some protests on their occasional tours to the USA but never, ever, has there been a boo or a hiss on New Year's Day in Vienna. Well, if you can sit through three hours of Strauss waltzes and schmaltzes you obviously have a brain made of Sachertorte!
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