Orchestra
Founded: Vienna, 28 March 1842. Home venue: Musikverein, Vienna. Salzburg Festival resident orchestra since 1925. Self-governing. 150 active members, all drawn from the Vienna State Opera. Annual New Year’s Concert broadcast to over 90 countries.
The Vienna Philharmonic is not a Salzburg institution, it is based in Vienna, it plays primarily at the Musikverein, and its members are all employed by the Vienna State Opera. But it is impossible to describe the Salzburg Festival without it. The orchestra has played every summer Festival since 1925. It is the sound the Festival was built around. When people who have never been to Salzburg imagine what the Festival sounds like, they are imagining the Vienna Philharmonic.
The orchestra was founded on 28 March 1842, when conductor Otto Nicolai gathered Vienna’s court musicians and proposed a democratic self-governing ensemble committed to the symphonic repertoire. The governance model, every player a voting member, has survived intact. Membership requires three years in the Vienna State Opera; the repertoire, the playing culture, and the characteristic sound are transmitted through a continuous tradition that now spans nearly two centuries.
That sound is specific. The Vienna horn, a variant of the French horn with a different bore and bell, produces a warmer and softer tone than instruments used by most other orchestras. The strings blend in a particular way. The balance between sections has a weight and warmth that regular listeners identify within a few bars. It is not the loudest or most technically precise orchestra in the world. It is one of the most distinctive.
The Salzburg connection runs across the entire history of 20th-century conducting. Herbert von Karajan, Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Bruno Walter, Carlos Kleiber, Georg Solti, and Zubin Mehta have all conducted it in the Festival. Each summer season in Salzburg, the Philharmonic anchors the major opera productions at the Grosses Festspielhaus and the most significant orchestral concerts. Hearing it there, in the building made for it, is a different experience from hearing it on a recording.
Locations
Built 1693
The Felsenreitschule is a theater carved directly into the Moenchsberg cliff face, which means the backstage wall is living rock and three tiers of 17th-century arcades form the auditorium. It was originally built in 1693 as a summer riding school for the Archbishop's horses.
Completed 1960
The Grosses Festspielhaus (Large Festival Hall) opened in 1960 as a major expansion of Salzburg's Festspielhaus complex, carved in large part from the Moenchsberg cliff face to achieve its 2,179-seat auditorium. Architect Clemens Holzmeister cut the main stage directly into the rock, creating one of the widest stages in the world at 100 meters.
