The Vienna Sound

The 117-year-old Vienna Philharmonic is a patrician among symphony orchestras. Others may be suaver, more brilliant, more impassioned, but no other orchestra brings to 18th and 19th century classics the same air of joyous spontaneity. Last week, under Conductor Herbert von Karajan, the orchestra arrived in Manhattan on a 40-day, six-country tour. At each of the concerts, the Viennese played Mozart--Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Symphony No. 40--and to many listeners the effect was startling. Most Western orchestras play Mozart as if they remembered the 18th century only as the Age of Reason, give the music a cold, chiseled brilliance. The Viennese approach is easy, mellow, almost sentimental, conveying a chamber group's intimacy in place of thrust and stride.

At the other end of the scale, the Vienna Philharmonic performed Anton Bruckner's sprawling (80 minutes) Eighth Symphony, a superromantic exercise whose occasional eloquence and melodic beauty is drowned in the wearisome repetition of meaningless climaxes. The orchestra brightened things again with a fine, majestic performance of Schubert's Symphony No. 8 (The Unfinished) and a round of selections from various Strausses, including a Fledermaus overture that seemed to transform Carnegie Hall into a crystal-hung ballroom.

Despite its eminence, one complaint might be made against the Vienna Philharmonic: it plays too little modern music, rarely even gets around to the works of such eminent Viennese as Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. But the men of the Vienna Philharmonic know what they like. Says Concertmaster Willy Boskovsky: "Our dominion, with our sound, is Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and the classics; at this we are good. Perhaps American orchestras can play some of the newer music better."

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