How It Should Be Played

The Vienna Philharmonic is 125 years old this year, and so is the .New York Philharmonic. Last week at Man hattan's Philharmonic Hall, the festivities merged as New York began its fall season by vacating the stage to the Viennese. In the Green Room at intermis sion, New York's Leonard Bernstein (who guest-conducted Beethoven's Leonora Overture No. 3 at the concert) embraced Vienna's Karl Bohm and wondered aloud whether the two orches tras might not be brother or sister.

If they are, the family resemblance is faint. Although the Vienna Philharmonic responded to Bernstein's exuberant beat with a reasonable facsimile of the razor-sharp New York sound, it played for Bohm with the familiar tone that has made it one of the outstanding groups in orchestral history.

The Vienna Philharmonic sound is that of an idealized chamber ensemble, a creamy, homogeneous, pliant blend of wind, brass and string tone that hovers in the air. Trumpeter Helmut Wobisch, the orchestra's manager, ascribes the sound in part to the peculiar nature of Vienna's brass instruments, wider in bore than those used in Ameri can, French and British ensembles, and handmade of exceptionally thin metal, producing a blendable tone without the usual cutting edge.

But an even better explanation for the Viennese sound probably lies in Vienna itself and its justifiable smugness where music is concerned. "Our grandfathers played for Beethoven and Brahms," explains Concertmaster (one of four) and Philharmonic President Walter Barylli, "and they passed this knowledge on to us. We know how they should be played."

To maintain its pipeline to the immortals, the orchestra employs only Austrians. Its members' built-in self-assur ance serves a dual function. On the one hand, this guarantees a standard of performance for which the men themselves will fight, no matter who is on the podium. On the other, it can create a special kind of psychological hell for whoever dares to mount that podium.

Democratic Anarchy. Not surprisingly, the orchestra runs itself, choosing its managerial board from within its ranks and voting its conductors on or off the podium at will. It has 154 playing personnel, all of whom are actually employed by the Austrian government as musicians for the Vienna State Opera. They decide among themselves which members are to get together in their so-called spare time to give ten pairs of concerts as the Vienna Philharmonic, and which will make up the opera orchestra on which nights. This kind of shifting personnel might seem like a mindless way to run an orchestra, but the saving grace in Vienna is the philosophy that the Philharmonic way of life is larger than life itself.

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