Quality is our middle name
The Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna
“We have to be excellent and prove ourselves. Then they cannot find fault with us”. At the height of the “disincorporation debate” about the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, Bertrand de Billy, its charismatic principal conductor, never tired of repeating this sentence in interviews. He personally wrote a declaration of solidarity and distributed it to audiences in the subscription concerts in Vienna. In magnificent concert recordings the RSO Vienna literally played for its life and the results were breathtaking. That was two years ago.
The papers were full of articles about the orchestra, and eminent supporters, not least the president of the Salzburg Festival, emphatically demanded that the orchestra’s continued existence be secured. Haide Tenner, since last season new managing director of the orchestra and head of classical music in the ORF, takes a more relaxed view of the situation at that time. “There was never any danger of the orchestra being disbanded, some things were exaggerated by the media”. However, she too admits that the publicity was useful. The situation has now settled down and at present there are no further debates. The orchestra has 88 members and eleven young players who are in the “orchestra academy”. As Haide Tanner says, “The RSO is regarded as the orchestra of the entire ORF and is closely associated with the institution.”
Good reviews of concerts by the RSO are of greater importance than media speculation about the orchestra’s future. And recently, whether they have played as an opera orchestra during the Klangbogen Wien festival and at the Salzburg Festival or for each of their subscription concerts, the reviews have been exceptionally good. “Our present principal conductor is very keen on producing a beautiful sound and on successively expanding the orchestra’s repertoire. For 25 years the RSO Vienna (Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra) has been synonymous with modern and contemporary music, no other orchestra in Austria can play new music and interpret first performances better. However, the fact that we also play a lot of Mozart or Mahler or romantic opera has also changed the musicians’ sensitivity towards music of the 21st century.” According to Haide Tenner focal points of the orchestra’s repertoire are, besides the commitment to contemporary music, works from the first half of the 20th century and music by composers who were forced into exile and forgotten.
The Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna plays masterpieces
of the past century
and music by Kurtág and Widmann at the Salzburg Festival.
The programmes for the concerts in the coming Salzburg Festival are prime examples for trying to achieve such aims. In the concert on 26 August the RSO Vienna conducted by Bertrand de Billy will perform exquisite masterpieces from the past century: Stravinsky’s ballet music Jeu de cartes, the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss with Soile Isokoski as soloist, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s late Symphony in F sharp major, op. 40, composed in 1952 in America. In the concert on 22 August the orchestra plays music by the two composers in residence György Kurtág and Jörg Widmann as well as more recent pieces by the Austrian doyen of composers Friedrich Cerha (Hymnus) and by the young Johannes Maria Staud, whose piano concerto Polygon can be heard with Thomas Larcher as soloist.
Heinz Rögl
RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA VIENNA
22 August, 8 p.m. • Kleines Festspielhaus
Conductor Bertrand de Billy • Piano Thomas
Larcher • Violin Hiromi Kikuchi •
Viola Ken Hakii
Friedrich Cerha Hymnus for orchestra
Johannes Maria Staud Polygon
György Kurtág … Concertante …
Jörg Widmann Cantus firmus for orchestra
26 August, 8 p.m. • Kleines Festspielhaus
Conductor Bertrand de Billy • Soprano Soile
Isokoski
Igor Stravinsky Jeu de cartes
Richard Strauss Four Last Songs
Erich Wolfgang Korngold Symphony in F sharp major, op.
40
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info@salzburgfestival.at