High-performance sport Music

No matter where you look, if in kindergarten, primary school, high school or the many music schools - Education with this quality meanwhile doesn’t even deserve the name. Once again the politics have to save money and once again they start with the arts and the music-education by closing music schools for example.  

Many tourists come to Austria in the expectation of seeing every kid holding a Violin under their arm, or a Cello on their back. Two generations ago, that still was the case. Every household had a Piano in the living room to play chamber music with the family and friends, little house concerts were common. Well, times have changed and classical music isn’t the ultimate music direction for most people. But Austrian people should at least know when Mozart was born and that Beethoven wrote more than three symphonies (Not only No. 2, 5 and 9, as some people think). Currently we have to be glad, if our kids know the difference between a guitar and a cello.

Globalization and its Problems…

The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna is one of the best Music Universities worldwide. Students from around the World want to study, where Mariss Jansons, Herbert von Karajan, Zubin Mehta, Rudolf Buchbinder and an endless list of famous musician teach(ed) or learned their profession. And they do. Every year thousands come to the acceptance exams. Only very few of them are Austrian Students. These tests are not generally used by Austrian Universities. Normally, you don’t have a test at all. It makes sense that every teacher only has a handful of students, the students need at least two lessons a week. Furthermore most teachers also play in an orchestra.

But as a result of these exams, there are fewer and fewer Austrian Students. Luka Kuzstrich managed the exam already six years ago. He is half Austrian, half Croatian. “I’m 20 years old and spent meanwhile 16 years of my life playing the violin. I began studying Violin at the University in 2005, back then I was still in school”, he told me while walking across the courtyard of the main building of the University in Viennas 3^rd district. “Every year we have more foreign students,” he carried on. A closer look at the statistics proved his conjectures. In the moment, the University has 3078 students- 1407, that’s nearly half of them, aren’t from Austria. 20 years ago, a long-serving teacher said, were approximately 3-5% of the students foreigners. Most of them from Europe or Russia. Today most students come from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

“And that’s precisely the problem”, says Gerhard Kaufmann, former cellist of the “Wiener Phillharmoniker”. The cellist was born in 1943 into a family of musicians. He began playing the piano at the age of five but he was already 15 when he started playing the cello. “That would be impossible today. If you want to become a musician and you have talent, you have to start with the age of four or five, latest! If you haven’t got a musician in the family who can practice with you when you are young, you haven’t got a chance in Austria”, Kaufmann carried on. The Chinese had the same problem. They solved the problem with “experts” coming to the kindergardens. They check if there are any kids with suitable hands and a bit talent that are worth being promoted.

Higher Level…

The level on which musicians play nowadays is much, much higher, than in the past. At Mozart’s lifetime there were much more musicians, but most of them must have been terrible. Therefore, the quality of the orchestras was awful, compared to today’s orchestras. However, even 20 years ago it was much easier to get a job in an orchestra. Mainly because of rise of quality – there’s no high-performance sport for which you have to train from childhood onwards every day up to ten hours, only to reach the level you need to have for the acceptance exam for the University. “It’s an awful circle. More and more musicians didn’t finish school so they had more time to practise Just imagine if a musician breaks his hand and couldn’t carry on playing his instrument. He would have nothing”, Kuzstrich says.

…and Viennese Specifica

Of course, the many foreign students also seek a job in one of the famous Austrian orchestras. If nowadays a musician retires and the orchestra is looking for a musician, thousands of musicians, not only from Austria but also from Russia, America, China and elsewhere, apply for the free job. The orchestra would usually demand videos from the applicants and then sorts out 99 %, inviting 20-30 musicians for an audition. There you have to play behind a curtain, so that the conductor and some of the orchestra musicians don’t support someone because of gender or race.

Strangely, the “Wiener Phillharmoniker” have, despite this facts, a big majority of Austrian musicians. The few foreigners are from other European countries, there’s not a single Asian musician. What is more, there are 125 male members in contrast to only three women. But how can they trick the curtain system? “Easily”, Lukas Kuzstrich says with a sad smile in his face. “The best teachers in University are from the Viennese Philharmonics. They not only make sure that their students get most of the rare auditions, but also try to mainly take Austrian or “Austrian looking” students”. The curtain is useless because the teachers sit in the jury and know exactly how their students sound.

Kaufmann, of course, denies all these heavy charges- or as Kusztrich said, “secrets everyone knows”. But he recognizes the problem and knows what has to be done against it: “It’s the politicians fault and the solution of these problem is easy: We need to spend more money in music education.”

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last time modified: Aug. 10, 2011, 8:25 p.m.