I never expected to end up in an orchestra like this
“It’s very positive to me. It’s a completely normal way of us living with each other. And we all have one main goal, to give the best possible concert – and that unifies us,” said Daniel Froschauer, chairman of the self-governing ensemble.
“Look at music schools: there are many more women than men. And we want the best members, so it was the right decision.”
Based since 1870 at Vienna’s Musikverein concert hall, the Vienna Philharmonic elects its leadership, engages conductors, chooses programmes and schedules tours and recording sessions.
It selects members from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and has had a summer residency at the Salzburg Festival since 1922.
Harpist Anna Lelkes played with the Philharmonic for 26 years as a non-member before she became the first woman admitted.
VPO women include 14 violinists, two viola players, two cellists, one double bass player, two harpists, one flautist, one clarinettist and one bassoon player.
The Berlin Philharmonic, widely considered Europe’s other great orchestra, admitted Swiss violinist Madeleine Carruzzo as its first female in 1982 and currently has 26 women, 99 men, and five vacancies.
The New York Philharmonic’s first female musician was harpist Stephanie “Steffy” Goldner in 1922; it now has 49 men and 45 women, with 12 vacancies. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra made principal horn Helen Kotas its first rostered female in 1941 and started this season with 59 men, 34 women and 15 openings.
In Asia, meanwhile, 37 of the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s 96 players are women.
Froschauer, a first violinist who has been a VPO member since 1998, was elected chairman in 2017. He said about 100 people apply for each open position in the State Opera Orchestra and a quarter are given auditions.
Harpist Anneleen Lenaerts, 36, applied for an opening at the suggestion of a friend, Xavier de Maistre, who left the Philharmonic for a solo cello career. She took a flight from Brussels, in Belgium, just before Christmas for a pre-audition and then the main audition the next day in the Mahler Hall of the State Opera.
She was among two finalists who waited in an adjacent room while the jury deliberated, and they were both called in for the announcement by Michael Bladerer, the double bass player who chaired the jury and is now the orchestra’s general manager, its No 2 official.
She debuted at State Opera in Strauss’ Arabella with Welser-Möst in 2011 and was admitted to the Philharmonic in 2014, just its eighth woman.
“I was a freelancer, playing solo and chamber music, which I loved. And I never expected to end up in an orchestra like this,” Lenaerts said. “It is a different country with a different history, different mentality, different language. All of that was new for me. (…)
“You just have to prepare as best as you can and then hope that in the pit it will go well. And on top of that, you have the schedule of the Vienna Philharmonic.”
Götsch, the clarinettist from Bolzano, Italy, was called into the orchestra as a substitute at the suggestion of VPO member Johann Hindler. She began at the opera with Verdi’s La Traviata in 2016 and played with VPO for the first time a year later in Mahler’s Symphony No 6 with conductor Daniel Harding. She won her audition in 2019.
A year later, she was confirmed for the Opera Orchestra and, in 2022, she became a VPO member.