Springtime from Vienna: a new beginning for Popelka and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra

di Alessandro Tommasi - 10 Aprile 2025

The Viennese orchestra returns to Trieste after more than a century for a new symphonic festival.

When he was appointed Music Director of the Vienna Symphony in 2023, Petr Popelka found himself catapulted into the great international scene. 39 years old, born in Prague, Popelka is no phenomenon of the moment: no meteoric career, no glittering Instagram reels, but rather a background as a composer and a long, steady career as a double bass player, which culminated in nine years as First Double Bass of the Staatskapelle Dresden, during which time he started taking an interest in conducting and having his first conducting masterclasses.

When you put it like that, an appointment at the helm of one of Europe’s great orchestras would appear to come out of nowhere. However, in the few years during which he began to favour conducting over double bass playing, Popelka rose to become Chief of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra from 2020 to 2023, then Artistic and Music Director of the Prague Radio Orchestra, a position he still holds.

Regardless, it is no wonder that the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the city of Vienna (celebrating its 125^thanniversary in 2025), is fascinated by the Czech musician, and it is immediately understandable when one has the good fortune to hear their concerts. With Petr Popelka one can feel an air of change, a different energy, great concentration and a collective desire to participate.

It is not just the enthusiasm of new beginnings. It’s an air of change that’s fuelled also by the large number of new formats, projects and initiatives promoted in recent years by the Intendant Jan Nast and fully supported by the vision of the VSO new Chief. Among these projects, one also concerns Italy: Frühling aus Wien, ‘Springtime from Vienna’, three symphonic concerts and a chamber music “aperitivo” that will liven up the city of Trieste, and particularly the Politeama Rossetti theatre from 10^th to 13^th April.

To have a chat about the project, I reached Petr Popelka by phone. Even though I live in Vienna, due to the intensity of the orchestra’s engagements over the past few weeks, the first opportunity I have to interview him is right after a concert with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in Beijing, where the orchestra was holding a short artistic residency.

Maestro Popelka, your path is quite peculiar. A double bass player and composer suddenly discovers himself as a conductor and in a handful of years achieves what for others would take decades. How did you first become interested in conducting?

It was actually composition, which paved the way for conducting. As a composer, you spend a lot of time studying and analysing other composers’ scores, perhaps helping yourself by playing some passages on the piano. This is in fact the first step to becoming a conductor. For me, however, it took quite some time to take that step; I was already over 30 years old when I started conducting! I had already been Principal Double Bass at the Dresden Staatskapelle for five years when I decided to take a sabbatical year, which I spent travelling, studying, composing and above all attending conducting masterclasses. Then I came back to the orchestra and started conducting mostly contemporary music ensembles. That’s how it all started.

Do you manage to still actively compose?

More or less… I mainly compose for friends, for small ensembles, for occasions I particularly care about. It is difficult to find the time to write, but I can’t imagine of giving up composing. A goal of mine is to find at least a few hours each month to cloister myself in a room and compose, as difficult as it might be and as difficult as, alas, it will become. But I will put my all into it!

Allow me to raise an observation: you were principal double bass of one of the best orchestras in the world, the Staatskapelle Dresden, why would one abandon such a position to face the uncertain future of a conductor?

I don’t know how to put it into words, but after my sabbatical I could actually visualize myself in this future, it was clear to me that I wanted to continue my musical path as a conductor. It is clearly very difficult to start from scratch, even more so as I haven’t done any regular conducting studies apart from a good number of masterclasses. You don’t just effortlessly get opportunities to conduct and challenge yourself.

When did your first big opportunity come?

At the Malko Competition in Copenhagen. After the competition, some musicians from the Danish National Symphony Orchestra recommended me to the management because they liked me, so I was re-invited for a production. Then, from those engagements came opportunities such as the Oslo Opera and then the Norwegian Radio Orchestra: after a project with me, even though they knew I was still in the bud, they saw my potential and offered me a regular collaboration as their Chief.

After three years in Oslo, you took up the position of Artistic and Music Director of another Radio, the Prague Radio Orchestra.

Yes, I hold that orchestra close to my heart. I left the Czech Republic to go to Germany when I was 18, and my career as a conductor developed mainly in Scandinavia and Germany. But the Prague Radio Orchestra is the first orchestra I played in professionally, I was only 18 the first time I played with them, and I have still many friends playing there. It was very natural to return to the orchestra as a conductor.

You had just taken the job in Prague when the position in Vienna opened up in 2022. Why did you accept so soon?

It was impossible to say no. When the Vienna Symphony Orchestra invited me, I had already done three or four productions with them and the potential of what we could do together was enormous. I noticed it straight away, there was always a wonderful chemistry, and I was sure that something special would be born with them. Not only that, but for a musician Vienna is a special city, it is in a way the capital of classical music. Luckily Prague and Vienna are not that far apart, unlike other conductors I don’t have to divide myself between different continents! In any case, I still only have one season left in Prague after this one, so the overlap will not last long.

You will then be able to devote yourself entirely to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. What are your goals for these first years?

I really want the orchestra to gain recognition in Vienna and around the world as one of the best in the business. That is also why we are investing a lot in touring and international projects, like this residency in Beijing. And I would also like the VSO to become a benchmark orchestra for the modernity of its original approach to programmes and formats, with a great focus on the relationship with the audience. We are inaugurating several new projects, and I am extremely happy to be involved in chamber music projects as well.

Speaking of programmes: which composers would you like to focus on? In the current and next seasons, I see a lot of Mahler, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg…

Yes, those certainly are some of the composers we want to work on in the coming years. The history of Vienna is central to the identity of this orchestra and notably the music of Gustav Mahler fits the VSO and their sound, their way of making music. However, there are other composers that are essential to me, such as Bartók, whose main pieces we play every year, or my beloved Schumann, a composer who is at times underestimated by audiences and orchestras but is nevertheless of utmost relevance, you really need a first-class orchestra to tackle his works. Then, of course, Mozart and Haydn: some conductors do not like to tackle them, they prefer to focus only on the ‘big pieces’, but it is essential for an orchestra to deal with the classical repertoire together with their chief conductor, it’s essential to make some room for such composers in every season.

What about the Czech repertoire?

Sure, but not right away. Of course, coming from Prague, everywhere I go I am asked to do Smetana, Dvořák, Martinů, Janáček. All of which I adore, let’s be clear, but I would like to steer clear of the cliché of the Czech conductor who conducts Czech repertoire, a bit like Italians who only do Italian opera. I don’t want to find myself boxed in and labelled in this way, so for now we will not focus on Czech composers just yet.

Another important, though not central, activity for the VSO is opera, including performances at the Theater an der Wien and the Bregenz Festival. Will you also take part in those productions?

Absolutely, yes. It has already happened, in fact, when we staged Jaromír Weinberger’s Schwanda in 2023, and next season we will have a Fledermaus by Johann Strauss that I am looking forward to. I personally love opera, I grew up playing it, I did it regularly in Dresden, I love conducting it and I think working on opera is the best opportunity to get to know your orchestra.

Why?

Because everything is different. Let’s just consider the schedule, a symphonic project lasts at most a week, often much less, but with opera you spend more than a month working with singers, choir, orchestra, directors and only then can the performances finally begin. Being a long process, you simply spend more time with people and have the chance to really get to know them. And if for someone all those rehearsals and performances can be boring, for me it is exactly the opposite. When there’s an opera on stage there are simply too many factors at play, everything is much more unpredictable. Let’s say that one day the soprano is not feeling very well, we will all have to adapt the tempos to make the opera work, which requires a great deal of flexibility and attention.

In Vienna there is another great orchestra whose name begins with ‘Wiener’ and which already benefits from the international reputation to which you aspire for the VSO. Is there a risk of suffering from competition with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra?

Of course there is. The situation is not so different from that in Berlin. In Berlin, all orchestras suffer somewhat from the overwhelming presence of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. So how do you do it? Well, first of all, it is crucial not to try to be the B-list Vienna Philharmonic. What we have to offer is something completely different, with projects that characterise us and more flexibility in the repertoire. I believe this is the only way to survive in a city where you are confronted with a historically relevant institution like the Vienna Philharmonic.

Speaking of projects, let us now move to this unexpected liaison with Italy: Spring from Vienna. Tell me more about this Festival in Trieste.

It is another project I am really happy about, something we could create from scratch together with the Intendant Jan Nast. We wanted to do something really special this year, and in fact the first concert opens with the Ballabili from Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth and Don Carlos (the latter being rarely performed in concert) and then the First Act from Wagner‘s Valkyrie, so an evening with an operatic slant. The second programme, on the other hand, is typical VSO repertoire: Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 ‘Prague’ and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. This too is a connection that fascinates me, considering that Mahler was a fantastic interpreter of Mozart. Of course, it must not have been a Mozart as faithful to the text and historically informed as we can imagine today, but I think it would have been very interesting to hear Mozart conducted by Mahler, as his annotations on the Mozart scores suggest. The third concert is a tribute to Vienna and the 200th anniversary of Johann Strauss Jr, still maintaining a connection with Italy and including some of Strauss’s more Mediterranean-influenced pieces, so to speak, and pieces inspired by Italy such as Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italiano. In short, three programmes that can bring a bit of Vienna to Trieste. 

Why Trieste?

There is a historical connection behind the idea. The Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Trieste are linked by a history that dates back to the origins of the orchestra. When the VSO was founded by Ferdinand Löwe in 1900, Trieste was the first city in which the orchestra performed outside Austria, taking advantage of the fact that the city was still part of the Kingdom at the time. Starting from this historical link, we thought of proposing a project that would recreate the same spirit.

What is your vision for this festival in the future?

One of my dreams is for Spring from Vienna to grow into a festival known throughout Europe, to become one of those festivals that the public flocks to because they know something special is happening in Trieste. I hope that in the future there could be more concerts, with more chamber music and maybe, one day, soloists, other guest orchestras, and for a duration of more than four days. In that moment we will know for sure that we have created a lasting legacy, a Festival that became a regular appointment and a point of reference in the European festival scene.