The
Wiener Singakademie choir of Vienna, Austria, is one of that ancient city's most durable vocal ensembles. For more than 100 years, the choir has been associated with the Vienna Konzerthaus concert hall.
The history of the
Wiener Singakademie goes back to 1858 when it was founded as a Singübungsanstalt, an institution for training singers. Although the choir soon evolved into a world-class performing group, the original function implied by its name has never been absent and has, at times, been emphasized. The
Wiener Singakademie has had several prestigious directors, the first of whom was
Johannes Brahms in 1862; famed symphonic conductor
Bruno Walter led the choir from 1911 to 1913 (when the choir began its connection to the Konzerthaus) and again from 1921 to 1922. The choir premiered works by
Grieg,
Anton Rubinstein, and
Pietro Mascagni. Both
Gustav Mahler and
Richard Strauss appeared as guest conductors, as did, later,
Wilhelm Furtwängler,
Paul Hindemith, and
Karl Böhm. Significant conductors since World War II have included Agnès Grossmann, the group's first female conductor (1983-1986), who reemphasized the choir's original training function, and Heinz Ferlesch (1998-). The
Singakademie has had 33 conductors, and Ferlesch's more-than-two-decade tenure is unusually long. The choir has about 60 members; it spun off a smaller Wiener Singakademie Kammerchor (Chamber Choir) in 2006. In the 21st century, the choir has worked with leading historical-performance specialists, including
Ton Koopman (in
Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245) and
John Eliot Gardiner. The
Singakademie has also programmed contemporary works such as
Giacinto Scelsi's Konx-Om-Pax (1969), which embodied aspects of the mystic syllable "om."
The
Wiener Singakademie has appeared on various recordings, operatic as well as choral.
Karl Böhm conducted the choir with the
Wiener Philharmoniker in a classic recording of
Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons). It released several
Bach recordings under early music pioneer
Karl Münchinger; these were collected on CD in 2010. In 2020, the
Wiener Singakademie joined the
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under
Dennis Russell Davies in a recording of
Leonard Bernstein's Mass.