In 1970, Dr. Raab, a trained singer and secondary school professor, began to represent singers.
In the same year, the Künstleragentur Dr. Raab is founded as an opera agency. The first offices are located in Gußhausstraße in the 4th district of Vienna.
Initially, the agencies activities were limited to Austria and Germany, but later expanded to also include e.g. Teheran and Cairo.
Among the singers represented are James King, Christa Ludwig, Walter Berry, Nicolai Gedda and George London.
In January 1973 the first move to Plankengasse in Vienna's 1st district took place. At that time the agency has three employees.
In September 1973 Dr. Böhm joined the artist agency and began to build up the orchestral touring department.
Dr. Böhm's first tour takes place in October 1973: The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Kurt Masur gives ten concerts in Austria, including Salzburg, Linz, Villach, Graz, Dornbirn, Klagenfurt and Vienna, as well as in Trieste, Italy.
This is followed by first tours with the Czech Philharmonic under Václav Neumann and the Hungarian National Philharmonic under János Ferencsik.
The first tour with a Russian orchestra was led by Dr. Böhm in December 1973 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and Kirill Kondraschin (assistant Dimitri Kitajenko) in cooperation with the Austrian-Soviet Society and the Soviet concert agency GOS-Concert.
In 1974 the assistant of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariss Jansons, is hired for the first time. Guest conducting engagements with the Niederösterreichisches Tonkünstler Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra followed later.
In the same year the first tour with the Staatskapelle Dresden takes place. The concerts in Dornbirn and Graz are conducted by Herbert Blomstedt.
First tours with the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest and the Orchestre de Paris followed in 1975/76.
1978 a tour of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra with Evgeny Mravinsky (Mariss Jansons as assistant) takes place in cooperation with GOS-Concert.
1980s
Over the period 1980-86, the opera festivals of the Arena di Verona are held every two years in the Vienna Stadthalle, with productions of Aida, Turandot and Nabucco, among others. In the late 80s, guest performances at Luxor in Egypt and in Tokyo follow.
In October 1980 the artist agency Dr. Raab organized a gala tour with the 5 main singers of the Bolshoi Theatre: Tamara Milashkina, Yelena Obraszova, Vladimir Atlantov, Yuri Masurok and Yevgeny Nesterenko.
The 1983/84 season finally saw the first tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and violinist Dmitri Sitkowetski under the baton of Neeme Järvi. The destination is Switzerland.
In 1986 Georges Prêtre became first guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The close relationship between the agency and the orchestra continues to this day. The following period brings with it engagements as principal conductors of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Vladimir Fedoseyev, who were represented by the agency at the time. From the 2020/2021 season onwards, the Colombian conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada will follow in this series.
In 1989, Dr. Böhm became a partner in the artist agency Dr. Raab, which resulted in the company being renamed "Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm GesmbH".
1990s
13 concerts with 13 major works: In the 1990s Dimitri Kitajenko led a summer tour of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra organized by the agency, during which 13 different major works were performed in 13 concerts - a tour de force for all involved.
In 1990, for the first time a tour took the artist agency Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm to the Herodes Atticus Theatre in Athens: the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra travelled together with the Vienna Singverein, and the Psalmus Hungaricus by Kodály was among the works performed.
In the 1990s the first contacts with American orchestras were established, which were taken on tour together with Konzertdirektion Schmid.
In 1990, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra entrusted Raab & Böhm with the realization of the orchestra's anniversary tour, first to Germany and Austria and finally to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Budapest.
On site in Vienna, Raab & Böhm opened an audition studio directly opposite the offices in Plankengasse in the 1990s.
In the Mozart Year 1991, artist agency Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm took the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Singverein and Georges Prêtre to the Cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris for a concert as part of the "Festival de Paris", which this year has Austria as its theme. Mozart's Coronation Mass will be performed.
After managing the artists' agency for over two decades, Dr. Raab retired in 1994, whereupon Dr. Böhm continued to run the agency as sole proprietor.
1995 Austria joins the EU. As a result, the labour market laws change: Orchestra representation is now possible abroad and concerts no longer have to be handled by a domestic agency. This results in much greater opportunities for international tours.
Each year from 1995-2000, the CBSO and its then Principal Conductor Sir Simon Rattle are invited to the Vienna Konzerthaus for three evenings in March, giving a total of 15 concerts under the motto "Towards Millennium".
One of the first agency tours to Asia took place in November 1996 with concerts of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan and Korea.
The agency modernized and began using e-mail in 1998. A short time later the first website follows.
1999 sees a new century ahead and a true century project for the agency. 1999 the first tour to the USA takes place with two concerts at Carnegie Hall. In addition to the SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg and conductor Michael Gielen, the choirs of the SWR, WDR, Radio Chorus Berlin and the Europa Chor Akademie will also be coming to perform Zimmermann's Requiem. The touring size reaches around 300 persons.
In the 1990s, Jane Glover became the first female conductor to be represented by Raab & Böhm.
2000s
The 2000s bring a series of unique guest-performances by the John Neumeier Ballet, which travels to Vienna and Athens several times with Raab & Böhm.
In 2001, the artist agency Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm sets up a summer tour of eight European cities for the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst, also involving the St. Florian Boys Choir, the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Wiener Singverein for the performance of Mahler's 8th Symphony.
Once again with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, this time under the direction of its founder Claudio Abbado, a Raab & Böhm tour with Mahler's 9th Symphony takes place in 2004.
Mag. Nora Pötter began working for Raab & Böhm in 2006, first as a staff member in the tour department, later as Artist Manager for instrumentalists.
The first conductor of the agency conducting a New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in 2008 is Georges Prêtre.
With a complete Beethoven symphony cycle, Raab & Böhm leads the Orchestre National de France under the direction of Kurt Masur to the Beethovenfest Bonn in 2008.
In 2009, Raab & Böhm takes the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with its principal conductor Mariss Jansons on a major tour of Eastern European cities such as Zagreb, Sofia, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Bucharest.
2010s
2011 Helga Machreich-Unterzaucher takes over the vocal department of the agency under the new name "Machreich Artists".
2013 Dr. Böhm puts the fate of the agency in the hands of Mag. Nora Pötter (as managing director and owner).
The agency begins to work increasingly for female conductors like Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Giedrė Šlekytė and others.
In 2014 the office moves to Paniglgasse not far from the company's primary address in Gußhausstraße in Vienna's 4th district.
The agency intensifies its touring activities with up to 150 guest performances per year. New destinations such as Yekaterinburg or Kazan (RUS), Yerevan (ARM), Shen-Zen and Wuhan (CHN), Vail (USA), Reykjavík (ISL) or Aix-en-Provence (FRA) are also being developed.
In Artist Management, territorial representations are simultaneously expanding towards more general management or European representations.
Between 2015 and 2018, Raab & Böhm is participating in the EU project "RCO meets Europe" of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Semyon Bychkov conducts as the agency's first conductor at the Bayreuth Festival in 2018.
In 2019 the first CD of a female composer represented by Raab & Böhm is released (Raminta Šerkšnytė).
In the same year the agency organized a world tour for Anne-Sophie Mutter & the Chamber Orchestra Vienna - Berlin (25 concerts).
2020s
The opening of the 100th Salzburg Festival by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla coincides with the 50th anniversary of the artist agency Dr. Raab & Dr. Böhm in 2020 - due to the global Covid-19 pandemic the festivities might be postponed to 2021.
