Weeny Wiener workforce

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra were today announced as the third-ever winners of the $1m Birgit Nilsson prize. In case you're thinking that sounds a lot, it only works out at about £4,000 per player - and it's more likely to be put towards educational or social work in any case.

But perhaps the most surprising fact to emerge from a report by Rupert Christiansen, a member of the prize jury, is that the Wieners employ only 12 permanent backroom staff. Yes, 12. For a pool of 148 players. I understand additional people are taken on tour, but the numbers are not huge.

In comparison, the LSO, only two-thirds the size, has a staff of more than 80. That includes a sales and marketing headcount of 12 - yes, the same size as the entire administrative workforce in Vienna. And I'm not picking on the LSO - other London orchestras employ similar numbers, as do their US counterparts.

How do the Wieners manage it? Well, they don't bother with social media for a start. In fact sales and marketing generally is low profile. There's no press department. If questions are asked of the orchestra, it's likely that first violinist (and orchestra president) Clemens Hellsberg will answer them. Ultimately the musicians manage themselves in many respects.  Go back a few years and it's how most orchestras operated.

It doesn't seem to do them any harm. The Vienna Philharmonic remain, arguably, the most successful orchestra in the world. They sell out pretty much everywhere they go. And regardless of whether you think they're artistically the best, the second best or the 17th best, they are undeniably pretty good, with conductors of all stripes regarding an invitation from them as a career pinnacle.

Less outlay on admin means more left over for the musicians. Something other organisations might like to chew over.

Comments

[Susan]

If they sell out without heavy promotion then there's no obvious need for a huge marketing department. I see nothing on the website about donating to the VPO, so apparently no development department. Ticket prices are high, and I'm guessing their subsidies are substantial. I see nothing on the website about donating to the VPO, so apparently no development department. The website is pretty slick, so that's no doubt outsourced. I'd say the VPO has a lot of money, and a lot of secrets.

[Nicolas]

Don't most of their concerts in Vienna operate on a subscription basis? With waiting lists of over ten years to get tickets? In these circumstances, they don't really need any promotion.

[inter mezzo]

Indeed, but you could turn that round and ask how they manage to sell out without 'marketing'.

[SJT]

Who, or indeed, what next?

The Corporation of London?

Gordon Getty?

After Muti and Domingo, Beergut's estate must be fast running out of deserving candidates exhibiting the requisite level of extant fiscal flushness....

[Kenneth Conway]

Great, great soprano. Stupid, stupid prize.

[Zwölftöner]

That the ‘Verein’ operates with a small back office is well-known here, but it should be mentioned that Staatsoper also provides the orchestra with dedicated administrative support. If it weren’t for that as well as the orchestra’s cosy connections with Austria’s political elite, the Wieners would probably have to devote more resources to accounting, if you get my meaning. But that’s just gossip, and like Rupert says, we can trust the orchestra for facts, right? Just the other week in California, Hellsberg told a whopping big fact about the orchestra never having received government subsidies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZz1k0PetVU&t=8m41s). Naturally if I were Hellsberg, I’m sure I’d want to forget about the now notorious Republiksvertrag, which funnelled 20 million euros of public money into the orchestra with a level of budgetary secrecy normally reserved for CIA black ops. But of course that was just another nasty little anti-Philharmonic rumour before parliamentary pressure from the Greens forced them to come clean about it. Dealing with an organisation capable of elevating public subsidy to the status of a state secret for seven years, I’d say there are no reliable facts without transparency. The Austrian law on associations doesn’t demand a great deal of that from ‘Vereine’, which suits the orchestra very well. I thought this was the kind of thing classical music reporters and editors were paid to ask tough questions about, but the Austrian press, the NYT and now the Telegraph have shown otherwise. Perhaps the reason the orchestra doesn’t need a press department is that their propaganda handily takes care of itself?

Christiansen calling the all-male membership a ‘canard’ while citing the actual female membership of less than 5% (and misspelling Albena’s name to boot) is gratuitously smug and asinine even by his standards. He’s wrong and uninformed about the current accessibility of the archive and the results of the historical report too. Is he aware that of the Jerger private archive – claimed to be lost or to have never existed, and last year conveniently ‘found’ with all the plausibility of a televised Ancient Egyptian tomb opening – Hellsberg’s historians only released one document? And given how close-knit the orchestra keeps its administration, that the suppressed archive of its wartime chairman might be somewhat important for historical understanding? I suppose that doesn’t weigh too heavily either in the balance of the award of the Birgit Nilsson Prize, as opposed to ignorance and sycophancy.

[JDabrowski]

I agree, but didn't Nilsson herself choose Domingo as the first recipient? Maybe it was her intent to create yet another Swedish monetary reward for people who are already famous and usually already rich.