Josephine Weinlich

Josephine Weinlich (also known as Josephine Amann-Weinlich), born in 1848, was a pioneering Austrian conductor and composer at a time when the podium was almost exclusively a male preserve. In 1868 she founded a ladies’ orchestra in Vienna, later renamed the Erste Europäische Damenorchester (First European Ladies’ Orchestra) and generally counted as Europe’s first women’s orchestra, and toured it widely, from Germany and Paris to Saint Petersburg and the United States. As a conductor she championed the light Viennese dance repertoire of the Strauss circle, and she composed dances of her own in the same idiom: waltzes, polkas and mazurkas for her ensemble to play. Long overlooked by music history, Weinlich has been rediscovered in recent years as an important early figure in the story of women in orchestral music. Her appearance on the New Year’s Concert programme reflects the Vienna Philharmonic’s recent efforts to broaden its repertoire and honour the women whose contributions to this tradition were once forgotten.