Wiener Klangstil

The instruments are no different from those in other international orchestras, the characteristics of the “Viennese string style” being entirely dependent on the human component. For most of these instruments there is evidence of string schools from the Viennese classical period to our day being taught by the concertmasters of the great Viennese orchestras, who passed on the musical tradition from master to pupil. Playing in a chamber music style and drawing on the Bohemian, Czech and Russian schools are also key features of the Viennese string sound.

The Wiener Klangstil is rooted stylistically in the rules of interpretation of Viennese Classicism mixed with German Romanticism. There is a clear preference for instruments which allow the player to control tone colour within a particular musical context.^[6] Just as the individual is subject to a process of continual change, so, too, is the characteristic style and timbre of an orchestra. An example of this constant evolutionary process can be heard in the use of vibrato by the strings of the Vienna Philharmonic during the 20th century. Similarly, the “Wiener Klangstil” is not fixed, though the adherence to the fundamental principles of timbre and style does not change, and this fundamental principle of timbre governs the range of wind instruments found only in Vienna.

During the second half of the 19th century all orchestral instruments underwent modification in the interests of greater volume (sound energy). Increased technical demands also led to new designs of woodwind and brass instruments. In the end the valve trumpet and the double horn (invented by Ed. Kruspe in 1900) became the dominant forms.

What is striking is that where new designs made instruments easier to play, but at the expense of the palette of tone colour, such instruments were – and still are – rejected by the Viennese orchestras. This is especially true of the woodwind instruments. Despite the fact that Theobald Böhm’s improvements to instruments in the second half of the 19th century are in use throughout the world, the modern “Vienna oboe” is simply a modification of the instrument by the Dresden instrument maker Carl Golde (died 1873). The clarinet and bassoon are slight modifications to German designs, and only in the case of the flute did players, around 1930, gradually switch to the universally used Böhm model. One reason for this may be that, as with stringed instruments, the timbre of the flute largely depends on the player rather than the instrument.

Because variety of tone colour was considered paramount, the double horn, though easier to play and more secure, was not adopted by the Viennese orchestras. The Vienna horn is, in essence, the natural horn of the Viennese classical era with double piston valves added by the instrument maker Leopold Uhlmann (1806–1878). The trumpet, instead of having the almost universal Perinet piston valves, is the old German model with rotary valves,^[7] while the F tuba is its own instrument type. The trombone in Viennese orchestras is the usual type, although here, too, the preference is for the tonal quality of a narrower bore.

Unlike the wind instruments, 19th century modifications to the stringed instruments (stronger bass-bar, steeper angle to the fingerboard and higher bridge) had less effect on the sound produced, and was probably a reason why the new instruments were readily adopted in Vienna. Ultimately, the sound produced depends less on the instrument than on the playing technique, and therefore the player.

In 2002 M. Bertsch, with the participation around the world of over a thousand test persons, published the first scientific and statistically robust evidence to support the claim for a “Vienna sound style”.^[8] The task was a blind test to recognize the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra using commercial CDs of the Vienna, Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras with examples played to some 1,000 persons including non-playing listeners, amateur musicians, professional orchestral musicians and soloists, sound engineers, university music students and top international conductors, some of whom, like Zubin Mehta and Seiji Ozawa, were represented on the discs chosen. ″Viennese style of playing and interpretation is more important to shaping its overall sound than the unusual instruments used.″^[9]