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The Vienna Symphony Names Its New Chief Conductor

This article is more than 5 years old.

Martin Sigmund

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra has announced today that the successor to Philippe Jordan will be Colombian-born Andrés Orozco-Estrada . He will officially start his tenure with the 2021/22 season while working closely with the orchestra in the 2020/21 season as the ‘Chief Conductor Designate’. Philippe Jordan had recently been appointed the next music director of the Vienna State Opera (which had been struggling to fill that position) and just crosses the street to continue his steep career-path.

Andrés Orozco-Estrada (*1977) has been living in Vienna for the last 20 years, making the connections necessary to work your way up in that unique city. In 2009 he had become the principal conductor of the Lower Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra, the orchestra right outside the gates of Vienna that the Viennese and the Lower Austrian’s pretend isn’t a Viennese orchestra, though of course it is. He was succeeded by Yutaka Sado (who has managed to breathe life into that orchestra like I would never have thought possible). Now, just a couple years later, Orozco-Estrada stumbles up the career ladder by two rungs to take over the solid No.2 orchestra in town, the Vienna Symphony.

It comes on top of an already humming, busy career: In 2014 Orozco-Estrada became the Houston Symphony Orchestra's music director, stepping into a line of luminary 1B-tier conductors (Graf, Eschenbach, Comissiona, Foster) and the principal conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. The same year he was named the London Philharmonic's new principal guest conductor. At least one of those jobs will have to go before he takes on Vienna.

Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts the Brahms Symphonies with the Tonkünstler Orchestra on Oehms

jfl (Werner Kmetitsch)

Amazon mp3: $30 | Amazon CD: $40 | ArkivMusic: $45 | Qobuz download: NA | iTunes mp3: $30

Clearly, Andrés Orozco-Estrada is a hot conducting commodity, noted (by the LPO Chief Executive justifying his decision) for his “remarkable energy, electrifying conducting, and sheer ability to radiate the joy of music-making” and repeatedly described as “charismatic” elsewhere. All the clichés and tropes that are connected with a conductor hailing from South America these days, be it Venezuela (‘the Dude’) or Colombia. (“close enough”, the European figures.) I have heard him only twice in concert before, once inoffensive and safe with the Munich Philharmonic and once dull-dull-dull with the Tonkünstler in St. Pölten (A Brahms Symphony and the Brahms D-minor concerto with Tzimon Barto). His recordings of Dvořák symphonies with the Houston Orchestra have been hailed by publicists but also described as “faceless, irritating ‘Brahms-light’” by notoriously cranky but knowledgeable CD-reviewing guru David Hurwitz. I, for one, eagerly await to have my impression changed from the hitherto ho-hum to the ravished excitement that is being hawked so heavily.

The Vienna Symphony has convalesced considerably under Philippe Jordan, who comes close to the modern ideal of a Kapellmeister in the best sense. Although thoroughly conventional in interpretative and musical outlook, the qualitative improvement Jordan imparted on the orchestra – a band that had first been de-facto rudderless for decades after Carlo Maria Giulini left in 1976 and then was led indifferently by Vladimir Fedoseyev (1997-2005) and Fabio Luisi (2005-2013) – left the orchestra in a much better, indeed enviable, position. Orozco-Estrada is hopping into a made bed; he should send Jordan a crate of bubbly.

In the press release, stuffed with the usual hollow phrases and interminable PR-speak, percussionist and orchestra chairman Thomas Schindl contributes a quote, telling us that in Orozco-Estrada the orchestra has experienced “one of the most exciting, most versatile and most inspiring conductors of our time” – high praise indeed! If one wanted to read between the lines, the gratuitous phrase “most versatile” jumps out, because it steers slightly off the cookie-cutter praise-for-new-appointment track… Especially so, if you also consider the line that the Intendant of the Vienna Symphony, Johannes Neubert, contributes, praising Orozco-Estrada for his “openness to innovation and his stylistic diversity” which will “allow the Vienna Symphony to position itself even more strongly as an innovative musical force in Vienna.” Perhaps the Vienna Symphony powers-that-be would like to take the VSO into the direction of a repertoire orchestra rather than just being a ‘Vienna Philharmonic light’ that grazes of the most standard of standard repertoire? Exciting propositions that will, undoubtedly, be immediately followed by the announcement of a complete Beethoven Symphony cycle with Orozco-Estrada.

jfl (Werner Kmetitsch)

Amazon mp3: NA | Amazon CD: $~15 | ArkivMusic: $21 | Qobuz download: £10 - 15 (Hi-Res) | iTunes mp3: $10

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