With great incomprehension, I have followed the media reports of the last few days regarding a dissolution of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
The rapid social changes and serious challenges of our era require more than ever a stable and financially well-positioned public broadcaster with a clear information, educational and cultural mandate. In my view, instead of discount populism, sustainable investments would be the order of the day.
So even if I personally think it’s completely the wrong way: Of course it’s possible to discuss savings for public service broadcasting.
It is unacceptable, however, that – as is the case every time savings are discussed – the ORF RSO Vienna is immediately and reflexively up for grabs. Nothing has been thought through to the end, the reactions of the last few days have sufficiently demonstrated the dimension of the impending loss, including various collateral damage. Instead of thinking intensively regarding the form in which the RSO, as a media orchestra of the 21st century, might make an even more important contribution to the ORF programme, the dissolution is proposed. Instead of a strategy for the future, the creativity is exhausted in the well-known “concepts” that are nothing more than a reduction in the ORF’s performance. Or is the RSO nothing more than a strategic pawn in the budget conflict between the ORF and the media minister?
From my own professional experience with the Tonkunstler Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker, I know that the structures of symphony orchestras are not always up-to-date and have to be adapted to new realities. But the ORF RSO Vienna in particular reacted early on. The funding requirements of the ORF RSO Vienna are extremely low for an orchestra of this size and quality. Even budget cuts would be once morest all cultural-political reason!
Austria rightly perceives itself as a cultural nation. As an optimistic-minded Austrian by choice, I hope that the decision-makers at ORF and the federal government will do the only right thing: to preserve ORF RSO Vienna in its size and quality!
Professor Johannes Neubert
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National Orchestra of France
