With the arrival of the Vienna Philharmonic on Friday for three concerts at Carnegie Hall, the
orchestra’s historic exclusion of women (not to mention its racist ideology) is to be discussed that
afternoon on Soundcheck, the WNYC New
York Public Radio talk show about music and culture. Invited to air their views about the
orchestra’s discriminatory practices are two feminists — the composer and scholar William
Osborne, a longtime critic of the VPo’s
hiring policies, and Abbie Conant, the former
principal trombonist of the Munich Philharmonic.
“It would be a chance to look at the history of this issue,” Soundcheck producer Brian Wise
notes, “where progress has or hasn’t been made, the questions of whether female musicians can or
can’t affect the sound of the orchestra, and where Vienna fits in alongside other European
orchestras on this issue.”
Another guest with a different point of view from Osborne and Conant is also to appear:
James Oestreich, classical music editor of The New York Times, an apologist for the orchestra in
my view. Soundcheck broadcasts at FM 93.9 on weekdays from 2 to 3 p.m. in the New York
region. Here’s the Souncheck archive of past
shows. You can listen to them online. For some background about the issues and Osborne’s
Internet activism, go here: “Taking on the Vienna
Philharmonic.”
Meantime, yours truly appears on the tube this morning in an hourlong interview about my
literary/journalist wanderings on Conversations with Harold Hudson
Channer. The program airs 10:30-11:30 a.m. on Channel 34 of the
Time/Warner Cable Television Systems in Manhattan and on Channel 107 of the RCN system.
“Conversations,” which airs Monday to Friday, is also streamed online during the broadcast at MNN.org. (I’ve never been able to get the link to work.
Maybe you can.) Channer’s guest in a repeat show on Wednesday will be Andre Schiffrin, who ran
Pantheon Books at Random House for 28 years and subsequently co-founded the alternative
commerical publishing house The New Press.
