Earlier this month, sold-out audiences (a rarity in New York these days) leapt to their feet after three exceptional concerts at Carnegie Hall. At a time when trans-Atlantic relations are far from harmonious, enthusiastic New Yorkers were not applauding an American orchestra but a European one, the legendary Vienna Philharmonic, arguably the greatest orchestra in the world.

What makes the Vienna Philharmonic so great? Surely not diversity, equity, or inclusion—three  words for which its website’s search function yields no results. The orchestra laudably maintains no statistics about any of its players’ demographic backgrounds or characteristics—and certainly employs no chief diversity officer. A quick review of an online gallery of its musicians’ headshots posted on its website shows that 142 of its 145 musicians (three posts are currently vacant) appear to be white, while 121 are male. Women were only admitted in 1997, but since that barrier was removed the Vienna Philharmonic has maintained no policy barring the employment of anyone of any background. Of the nonwhites, one is a South Korean-American woman violinist, while two male performers—a cellist and violinist—are identified in the media as brothers of mixed Austrian and Japanese parentage.

The Austrian ensemble’s musicians are chosen through one of the most vigorous—and fair—processes in the world. Players must first have performed in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, itself one of the world’s finest ensembles, for two years following a one or two-year probationary period. To enter the State Opera orchestra, applicants must apply for a vacant position, each of which normally draws about 100 applicants. About 25 percent of those applicants are selected for auditions given in a way once traditional throughout the world of classical music—a short, assigned performance behind a screen, to keep the process “blind” to any consideration other than qualitative musicianship. A jury of about 20 people on the other side has no knowledge of the applicant but merely listens and assigns points. Those who reach a certain threshold score advance to a second round, which narrows the pool down to finalists who then enter a third round, after which all points are tallied to determine the winner.

If that sounds like the best way to select orchestral musicians, you might just have enjoyed Vienna’s Carnegie Hall residency this season, which was led by guest conductor Riccardo Muti. Its programs sounded best in delivering great music of the Romantic Era composers who inhabited the Habsburg Empire’s core crownlands. Mozart’s final symphony, his 41^st, resounded with warmth, brilliance, and élan in the third concert, followed by a deeply soulful rendering of Dvořak’s Ninth, “New World,” Symphony, which premiered at Carnegie Hall and was informed by American sonic inspirations, and the jaunty overture to Johann Strauss Jr.’s cheerful operetta The Gypsy Baron. The first concert’s second half, which featured Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, soared beautifully into the realm of the Austrian high romantic. Remaining selections by Schubert, Stravinsky, and the Italian composer Alfredo Catalani, also unrolled flawlessly.

If, on the other hand, you hold onto DEI, you might agree with leftist media outlets that have been critical of the Vienna Philharmonic for lacking “diversity” and thereby failing to meet the lofty standards of American progressives. In 2020, The New York Times’s then-chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini called for the end of blind auditions to promote diversity in American orchestras. Ironically, blind auditions had been adopted by American orchestra in the 1970s specifically in response to allegations of discrimination against women and racial minorities and have since been defended by labor unions representing musicians, which have skewed left in other ways. But for Tommasini, blind auditions just did not go “far enough” and were in his opinion “untenable,” producing orchestras that were still overwhelmingly white and male. At the time he wrote, he complained that the New York Philharmonic had just one black player out its 106 musicians, a fact he simply could not abide in a city that he said was “a quarter black.”

The American public, which opposes racial preferences in all fields of endeavor by nearly 70 percent, seems to be rejecting Tomassini’s view, as do the current federal and many state governments, which have reversed course from recent policies and prohibited DEI content and considerations in public institutions, and the judiciary, which has outlawed racial preferences in college admissions. But so, too, do the critics, all of whom in reviewing the Vienna Philharmonic this year—including that of Tommasini’s successor in the former paper of record—were positive, but hardly any of whom mentioned issues involving either race or gender, even observationally. American orchestras should take note and pursue excellence alone.