The Scene in Europe

A recurring theme here has been the difference between the European and North American musical scenes. As a young player I studied in Spain and Austria and  have returned to debut in London and tour in France, Germany and Italy. In recent years I have attended the Salzburg Festival on three occasions.

Things are very different in Europe: audiences are more numerous, younger, and don't clap between movements. The concert repertoire is also far broader. Heather MacDonald offers a detailed description after a recent visit to Prague and Vienna: Europe’s Music Meritocracy.

Vienna was the cradle of Western classical music from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century; it remains one of the three or four most important musical centers today. Not surprisingly, the soloists are more international than in Prague. A Mongolian bass-baritone, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, was the high point of a Tosca performance at the Staatsoper; I had heard him in 2021 in a preposterously updated Rigoletto (think: a dry-cleaning shop under a subway station) at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence. The other leading cast members were from Bulgaria, Italy, and Russia. The conductor, Yoel Gamzou, was an Israeli-American. At the Volksoper, I attended a feminist bastardization of Puccini’s La Rondine, ending with a fin-de-siècle version of Thelma and Louise, gleefully targeting the patriarchy. The production featured a German-British conductor, a Dutch director, a Swedish lead soprano, and an Italian-American Juilliard graduate as leading tenor. 

The most striking aspect of these Central European orchestras, from an American perspective, is the lack of Asians. Not a single Asian is to be found in the Vienna Philharmonic’s violin, viola, cello, and double bass sections—something almost inconceivable, from an American perspective. In fact, there are no Asians in the entire orchestra. This is neither inherently good nor bad. It is just radically different. In the violin section alone of the New York Philharmonic, there are 20 Asians, including the concertmaster, out of 26 members.

Why the difference? Central European orchestras retain remnants of a guild system: students apprentice in local conservatories and get hired into the orchestras where their teachers play. Reflecting that close bond, performers’ biographies in concert programs often pay charming tribute to teachers, something one rarely sees in American programs.

Yes, Europe has a lot of problems, but the lack of appreciation of cultural traditions is not one of them.

Here is the Brno Philharmonic with La Valse by Ravel.