Recently in Vienna, I took a cab from the airport to my hotel on the Margaretenstrasse, where the first performance of “The Magic Flute” took place. Along the way, we passed many remarkable sights, but the only one which the driver, who had no idea that I might be musically inclined, pointed out was the magnificently illuminated opera house. The Viennese are extremely proud of this structure and view it as the center of their cultural universe.

This remarkable building is home to the best opera orchestra in Europe. In fact the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and our own Metropolitan ensemble establish the worldwide standard of excellence within the pit. But when the personnel at the opera house take the short stroll from the Ringstrasse to the Musikverein to change into the Vienna Philharmonic, the transformation is as radical as that of Clark Kent to Superman.

This change is a lot more complex than, say, the Cincinnati Symphony performing classical music at Carnegie Hall on a Monday night under Paavo Jarvi and then donning their white jackets to become the Cincinnati Pops with Erich Kunzel the next. In Vienna, the musicians must change something much more elemental than their clothes: They must adopt the mindset of management as well as that of labor.

When the orchestra was formed by Otto Nicolai, it immediately became a self-governing body. Nicolai, who is perhaps best known musically for inaugurating the now standard practice of inserting the “Leonore Overture No. 3” into performances of “Fidelio,” was a good businessman. He invented the subscription concert series and set the orchestra on a solid financial path that led to their being able to build their own concert hall under Otto Dessoff and retain autonomy even during challenging times.

Vienna’s orchestra is hardly the oldest in Europe, having been formed in 1842, well more than 200 years after the Dresden Staatskapelle, who are appearing at Carnegie this April. In fact, the group was officially formed the same year as the New York Philharmonic. What distinguishes the Vienna Philharmonic is their steadfast defense of their unique sound.

The bulk of these musicians are the sons, nephews, and grandsons of former orchestra personnel who have been trained literally from infancy to play in a particular, recognizable manner. Even their instruments are inspected for pedigree, not period per se, but for a certain construction and functionality. Phrasing decisions, bowings, tempi, timbre, blending, embouchure, and attack are all geared towards the preservation of the great tradition, the very lifeblood of the Danube itself.

Decisions about which conductors to hire are exclusively the province of the membership. One no longer becomes music director; rather, one is invited to conduct. Animosities from the opera house can easily spill over. It is interesting to note that the first Mahler symphony to be premiered in Vienna was the Ninth, and then only after the conductor had died. Whereas he had absolute power in the theater, Mahler, a notorious martinet, was but an infrequent invitee for orchestral concerts.

The signature sound of the ensemble is difficult to pigeonhole. The strings are not silken, like the Berlin Philharmonic before Rattle, nor luxuriously blended like the Philadelphia prior to Eschenbach, but rather glowing, almost crepuscular. The brass is decidedly decorous in comparison to American orchestras. The entire sonic impression is “lived in,” a bit overstuffed, even charmingly seedy. There is also a distinct sound heard in the audience at one of these New York appearances. If you sit in the balcony and do not speak German, it may be rather difficult for you to communicate with your neighbors.

The unbroken link with the performance practices of the past makes the Vienna hard to beat in Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, and Brahms, but, conversely, limits their repertoire expertise. When James Levine decided to record the music of the Second Viennese School, he chose the Berlin Philharmonic, stating that in Vienna they had no sense of how to perform their own 20th-century music.

The sound also lends itself perfectly to the uniquely Viennese concept of Schlagobers – literally, “whipped cream.” No Vienna Philharmonic concert is truly complete without at least a couple of encores of Johann Strauss or Franz Lehar. Rather surprisingly, the new music director of the Vienna Opera, who matured in Japan and learned most of his technique from Saito Kinen and Leonard Bernstein, is a natural-born waltz conductor. Seiji Ozawa is off to a great start in Vienna and everyone there speaks of him with both love and respect. Still, he is relatively new in town.

The emphasis on historical and stylistic preservation has caused some controversy, especially in the 1990s when American feminist groups protested Vienna’s exclusion of women. Carnegie’s executive director at the time, Judith Arron, wrote that “the opportunity to encourage the Vienna Philharmonic to move in positive directions” was one of the best reasons for engaging them each year in New York.

The group has since adapted its hiring policies but not everyone has gotten the message. It was mildly amusing before a 2002 concert to observe a few straggling protesters in front of Carnegie Hall while the new female musicians of the ensemble were hanging about outside the back entrance, intermingled with the men, smoking cigarettes. Their continued nonmember status is the result of strict tenure rules at the opera house, not the policies of the musician-run orchestra itself.

The ensemble also has a bit of a supercilious reputation. Some years ago, one very famous conductor who dared to expound on his own ideas for a presentation of a well-known tone poem was rebuffed by an elderly musician who growled, “We played this for Richard Strauss; what do you know about it?” But the roster of great conductors who have led this orchestra is a list of the immortals: Brahms, Richter, Mahler, Weingartner, Toscanini, Furtwangler, Walter, von Karajan, Bohm, Bernstein, Abbado, and in recent seasons, Haitink, Harnoncourt, Ozawa, Muti, and Mariss Jansons.

Mr. Jansons was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1943, the son of renowned conductor Arvid Jansons. He is best known here for his fine tenure at the Pittsburgh Symphony, an orchestra that he molded into one of the most disciplined in the world today. Mr. Jansons will always be an interesting footnote in New York musical history.

One of two announced finalists for the post recently vacated by Kurt Masur, he was nosed out by Lorin Maazel, when the flamboyant maestro won the undying love of the local orchestra’s personnel by canceling a rehearsal of the Symphony No. 8 of Anton Bruckner, stating that the players already knew their parts. The recalcitrant orchestra had complained that Mr. Jansons was, by contrast, “patronizing” by daring to ask them to play phrases from the “Symphonie fantastique” during his preliminary sessions.

Since many critics consider Mr. Jansons the best conductor on the planet, this can certainly seem to be New York’s loss. But the maestro has now landed the plum job in all of classical music, the directorship of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, arguably the finest ensemble in the world. Next season, we can hear the new dream team at Carnegie Hall.

Mahler famously opined that “tradition is just the memory of the last bad performance.” Perhaps ultimately that is why he had such a rocky time of it in Vienna.