Music: Cruising with the Viennese

One of the most important words in the Viennese patois is Schlamperei, meaning, roughly, negligence or sloppiness. The word has long applied to government, often to business and sometimes to music.

In music it is accompanied by the frequently heard plea: “We may not play all the notes, but you must admit, we have heart.”

To judge from its first U.S. appearances, the famed Vienna Philharmonic, the world’s second oldest symphony orchestra,* has never heard of Schlamperei. It performs a feat that is the essence of all art but seems to be becoming increasingly rare, in Vienna or elsewhere; it combines heart with precision, sentiment with discipline.

Changes at Length. At Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall last week, the Viennese were led by Germany’s thoroughly craftsmanlike Carl Schuricht, who during the orchestra’s current U.S. tour (31 concerts) will alernate with Belguim’s Andre Cluytens. Schuricht, a kinetic 76, conducted with broad, firm gestures that belied his frail appearance, seemed to be perfectly in tune with the Viennese. The audience was plainly delighted from the moment the orchestra’s famed string section started to play—or rather, to sing. In Mozart’s short Symphony No. 23, written when he was 17, the orchestra brought out a remarkable feeling of adolescent sentimentality—the oboe solo in the andante section positively swooned—as well as hints of emotional deeps. Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, about as nearly threadbare as a Beethoven work can be, had its nap teaseled attractively. But the evening’s piece de resistance was Symphony No. 7 by Anton Bruckner (1824-96).

Bruckner represents Vienna to the longhair almost as fully as Johann Strauss does to the waltzer. An organist-teacher who knew and idolized Richard Wagner,* Bruckner was remarkably prolific (eleven symphonies) but never won wide popularity, has only a handful of dedicated champions in the U.S. His critics feel that his music is long-winded, full of thunderous ups and downs but no real climaxes. His Seventh Symphony refloats Wagner’s old ecstasies on a luminous sea. Tunes follow one another like long ground swells; the hues and moods change gradually and at length. When it is all over, an hour after it starts, it feels like a cruise; the listener’s senses have been gratified but he may feel that he is right where he started.

Secure in Memory. Along that cruise, the Vienna Philharmonic never went off course for an instant; there were no frazzled high notes among the fiddles, and the fine, big blare of the fortissimo passages was never ugly.

The Vienna Philharmonic’s 140 musicians are among the world’s busiest; they spell each other in concerts, the Vienna Opera pit and recording sessions (the orchestra has probably been recorded more often than any other). Most remarkable of all, it is a cooperative group, rules itself democratically and feels no need for a permanent musical director. Secure in the memory of having been conducted by Brahms, Mahler and Richard Strauss, it has the sure flexibility of a string quartet, a sense of inner joy not matched by other, more overpowering orchestras. In time, it may even convert American concertgoers to Bruckner.

*After London’s Royal Philharmonic (1813). It gave its first concert in March 1842, eight months before New York’s Philharmonic. *Soon after Wagner died in 1883, Bruckner said that the second movement of his Seventh Symphony was intended as a memorial to the master. Actually Bruckner had written the movement well before the composer’s death. His blithe explanation: he had conceived the music following a premonition of Wagner’s end.