A key year

At the beginning of the 1870s the Capell-Verein, the Concertgesellschaft, the Choral Society and the Liedertafel launched a subscription appeal for a new concert hall. It met with a great deal of resonance, but with just as much resistance. The proposed hall was too expensive and acoustically inferior, it was said - and it was questionable whether the orchestra was anything like big enough or good enough for a hall like that. But on 4 October 1876 the concert hall on Steinenberg was inaugurated. Alfred Volkland conducted Beethoven's 9th symphony. The acoustics were excellent.

A further milestone in the orchestra's history is closely connected with the new hall: the Capell-Verein and the Concertgesellschaft, both in financial difficulties, merged to form Basel's Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft (AMG). That brought the gruelling competitive situation to an end. To meet the requirements of the new hall, the orchestra was expanded under its new sponsor: it now counted 52 members, 38 of them professional musicians.

The year's third major development was the selection of Alfred Volkland as successor to Ernst Reiter, who had died in 1875. Volkland was not the first choice - Friedrich Hegar was, but he decided to accept an attractive offer from the Zurich Orchestral Association, which later became the Tonhalle orchestra.

Women in the orchestra

Many European orchestras remained men-only well into the 20th century, but the AMG orchestra admitted the first female musician - harpist Johanna Koch-Amort - into its ranks as early as 1899. Until the end of the first world war the proportion of the orchestra's female members grew steadily, on occasion to as much as a quarter. After that, though, there were rarely more than three or four female musicians. As recently as 1969 the 91 members of the orchestra included just five women: a little over 5 per cent. Today women account for around 29 per cent.

With Suter into the modern age

Alfred Volkland resigned after 25 years as the AMG's director of music. Under his leadership, Basel had developed a concert scene of international stature. He was succeeded by composer, organist and conductor Hermann Suter, 32. Although Suter's compositional style tended towards late romanticism, as a conductor he quickly came to champion modern music. Works by Stravinsky, Bartòk and Honegger regularly appeared on the programme. Not always to the delight of the audience: when he presented Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231 in January 1925, it was received in stony silence – whereupon Suter turned round and announced that in order to create a better understanding of the piece, he would now repeat it. Another of Suter's priorities was the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, which he performed in their entirety during his 24 years in charge. The orchestra that Suter took over in 1902 had 68 members – now almost all professional musicians.

Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss

In the spring of 1903 the Basel orchestra welcomed the two most prominent conductor-composers of the age as guest conductors. On 24 March the AMG held a special concert in which Richard Strauss presented works including his tone poems Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan, and on 15 June Gustav Mahler conducted his 2nd symphony at the 39th Music Festival of the General German Music Society in the Basel Minster.

Cash from conflagration

In October 1904 the Stadttheater was burnt to the ground. Theatrical operations were suspended until its reconstruction was completed in 1909. To keep the orchestra going meanwhile, the AMG received direct state subsidies for the first time (25,000 francs a year). When the theatre reopened in 1909 its state subsidies were increased to 90,000 francs a year, 76,000 francs of which it had to hand over to the AMG in payment for the orchestra. The orchestra was able to expand. In just a few years it grew to 76 members, 54 of them string players.

A new sponsor

The privations of the war years and the post-war period left their marks. The AMG was no longer able to fund the orchestra, which had decreased to 57 members. An annual state subsidy of 100,000 francs was promised, and the Basel Orchestral Society (BOG) came into existence as a joint project of the AMG, the Stadttheater company, the Conservatoire, the GGG's Kommission für Volkskonzerte, the Basel Choral Society, the Basler Liedertafel and the Basler Männerchor. Once again – as in 1855 – the orchestra had a sponsor whose principal function was to manage it and hire it out to the various clients. This was a construct that would shape Basel's orchestral landscape until long after the BOG was wound up in 1989.

Basel has a new podium star

Hermann Suter died in June 1926. The AMG Committee got wind of the fact that Felix Weingartner, the celebrated conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, was interested in succeeding him. On 26 October it sent a delegation to Mannheim and put out feelers to the star at a concert he was conducting. Soon afterwards the sensation was complete: Felix Weingartner signed a five-year contract with the AMG, also agreeing to become director of the Conservatoire and act as guest conductor on several occasions at the Stadttheater. Weingartner's arrival in Basel in 1927 triggered nothing less than euphoria. For month after month, all the concerts he conducted were sold out. Weingartner left Basel in 1935 when he was appointed to the Vienna Court Opera, but he remained true to the orchestra as a guest conductor until his death.

Tradition and constancy

Felix Weingartner was succeeded in 1935 by Hans Münch, who had conducted the Liedertafel and the Choral Society since 1925. Münch's programmes reflected both contemporary public taste and the predilections of the AMG: lots of Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert, occasionally the French repertoire of the early 20th century. Contemporary works were rare, though during Münch's 31-year incumbency there were a few interesting Basel premieres – among them Stravinsky's Petrushka (1939), Hindemith's symphony in E flat major (1944) and piano concerto (1964), Martinu's 1st symphony (1945) and oboe concerto (1966), Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (1946), Shostakovich's 5th symphony (1947), Prokofiev's 1st and 2nd violin concertos (1939, 1947), Honegger's Liturgical Symphony (1951), Rolf Liebermann's Furioso (1952), Bartòk's 2nd violin concerto (1947), 3rd piano concerto (1947) and Concerto for Orchestra (1953), Berg's Four songs (1953) and K. A. Hartmann's 3rd symphony (1953). (Years in brackets: first performances in Basel)

A palace revolution

After the end of the second world war the BOG board proposed an increase in the orchestra's strength from 60 to 64, together with changes to its salary structure. This proposal did not go far enough for the musicians. At the 1947 General Meeting, instead of the usual handful of musicians, almost the whole orchestra turned up – and the motion was thrown out. The board then resigned en bloc. This cleared the way for a reorganization of the BOG: modern salary terms and welfare benefits were introduced, and the artistic management of the musicians was improved. This secured the orchestra's successful long-term development.

An 'avant-gardiste' heading the AMG?

Pierre Boulez made his conducting début in Basel in 1960, at the invitation of Paul Sacher. Between 1960 and 1963 Boulez taught an analysis and composition class at the Music Academy, and between 1965 and 1969 he gave three-week conducting courses. After his first course the AMG offered Boulez the job of artistic director, in succession to Hans Münch who had resigned. Boulez declined, because he was afraid of being dependent on the theatre – and he saw no possibility of repeating programmes in other cities. But the French conductor maintained his links with the Basel orchestra. In september 2015, in collaboration with the Paul Sacher Foundation, the Sinfonieorchester Basel organized a concert in honour of Boulez's 90th birthday.

An opera director

Under the aegis of theatre director Werner Düggelin, Swiss conductor Armin Jordan became director of music in 1969 and musical director at Theater Basel in 1973. Düggelin had to overcome resistance to Jordan's appointment from the theatre cooperative, but Jordan became an audience favourite – and he was also held in high regard by the orchestra. For many of those who experienced them, his Salome, his Lulu, his Ring – as well as performances of operas by Shostakovich and Zemlinsky – are unforgettable.

The Radio-Orchester comes to Basel

Patron of music Paul Sacher, leading representatives of SRG, Basel city government and the cantonal parliament came out strongly in favour of relocating the Radio-Orchester Beromünster to Basel from its previous home in Zurich. They hoped it would bring increased prestige. The plan was to integrate the radio orchestra into the BOG as its second orchestra. The BOG, however, was sceptical about the project. It was unable to identify any call for additional orchestral services on Basel's concert scene, and it would have preferred a model based on a single strong orchestra. It yielded under pressure, and from 1970 the BOG had two orchestras under its roof, with a total of around 160 musicians: the BOG's previous orchestra, now called the Basler Sinfonie-Orchester, and the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Basel.

Mahler renaissance

In 1966 Hans Münch retired after 31 years as artistic director of the AMG. The position remained vacant until 1972, when Hungarian-Israeli conductor Moshe Atzmon was selected as his successor. Atzmon's programmes were balanced, regularly including new music. But above all he championed the cause of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, which had practically disappeared from Basel's concert halls after the Weingartner era came to an end. During his 14 years in Basel Atzmon performed all of Mahler's symphonies at least once.

A new theatre

Ab 1972 wird an einem neuen Basler Theater gebaut, 1975 wird es eingeweiht. Sein Wahrzeichen ist sein Dach, eine 60 Meter weite Hängeschale aus Spannbeton. Der Entwurf stammt vom Ingenieur Heinz Hossdorf und den Architekten Felix Schwarz und Rolf Gutmann.

Conductor in residence

"Antal Doráti came, conducted and conquered" – that was the headline of the review of Doráti's first guest appearance in Basler Nachrichten in January 1968. But after a second guest appearance in 1972, it was not until 1984 that the world-famous maestro came to Basel again – though his visits after that were more frequent. The position of artistic director of the AMG was vacant for two seasons, between the resignation of Moshe Atzmon and the arrival of his designated successor Horst Stein. Doráti declared his readiness to conduct at a number of concerts, and between 1984 and 1987 he conducted the Sinfonieorchester Basel in 17 repeated AMG concerts.

The dream candidate

On 9 September 1987 Horst Stein opened his first season as Artistic Director of the AMG with works by Henze, Mozart and Schubert. Stein was the candidate the orchestra wanted. His repertoire was wide and varied, concentrating particularly on Mozart, Richard Strauss and Wagner. In his seven years in Basel he performed 117 works, 42 of them composed in the 20th century. His era was characterized by artistic successes, but it is not difficult to discern from his remarks in a 1994 interview that his relationship with the idiosyncrasies of the Basel music scene was not entirely sweetness and light. It would be better for Basel's music scene, he said, "if the principal conductor of the AMG were also the general musical director of the orchestra and the opera. As it is, strife is unavoidable."

1989 until today