Music: The Vienna Sound

The 117-year-old Vienna Philharmonic is a patrician among symphony orchestras. Others may be suaver, more brilliant, more impassioned, but no other orchestra brings to 18th and 19th century classics the same air of joyous spontaneity. Last week, under Conductor Herbert von Karajan, the orchestra arrived in Manhattan on a 40-day, six-country tour. At each of the concerts, the Viennese played Mozart—Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Symphony No. 40—and to many listeners the effect was startling. Most Western orchestras play Mozart as if they remembered the 18th century only as the Age of Reason, give the...