prize5-2, Exercise 2: The Vienna Philharmonic in 1947

Model answer (check the details):

Why it is described as significant: a leading Austrian orchestra, with Bruno Walter, a conductor who had been forced to leave Germany and Austria, performed in a British city only two years after the war. Commentators have read it as a gesture of reconciliation and as a sign that Edinburgh's festival was truly international.

Evidence needed to check the description:
1. Contemporary reviews and reports, to see whether people at the time spoke of reconciliation or mainly of the music.
2. Programme notes, speeches and letters by the organisers, showing what they intended.
3. Audience records and memoirs, with the caution that memoirs are written later and may reflect the later story.
4. The orchestra's own archive and the biographies of the conductor and the founders.

Likely conclusion: the symbolic reading is plausible and was probably in the minds of some people, but it should be described as an interpretation unless contemporary sources support it.