The American conductor Marin Alsop has been appointed artistic director of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, becoming the first woman to take up the prestigious role.

Alsop, one of the world’s leading conductors, and the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, said she was honoured to be assuming the post in Vienna, which she called “the seat of classical music”.

Acknowledging how groundbreaking the appointment was for the classical music capital of the world, which has often been shockingly slow to welcome female musicians, let alone promote them to leadership roles, Alsop said she welcomed the chance to “push the envelope” for women in music. But she said she hoped the time would soon come when being “the first woman” would no longer be news.

“I’m very honoured to be the first,” she admitted, “but I’m also rather shocked that we can be in this year, in this century, and there can still be ‘firsts’ for women.”

She said she was determined to see her appointment as the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor as “an opportunity to try to push this issue forward past being ‘the first’ and more about how we can create many more opportunities for a wide range of women in these roles and how we can change the landscape for future generations”.

The Vienna music world has frequently made headlines for its fusty attitude towards women. Only 20 years ago the Vienna Philharmonic bowed to public pressure and announced it would officially accept female musicians for the first time. What it was reluctant to admit was that it had had a female musician – the harpist Anna Lelkes, for the previous 26 years, but had never acknowledged her presence, and only allowed for her hands to be visible during television broadcasts. Even after officially opening up to women, the orchestra was extremely slow to appoint them and even today it remains overwhelmingly male dominated.

Alsop described the Vienna RSO, which celebrates its 50th birthday next year, as an innovative and cutting-edge orchestra which saw its responsibility in “doing the unexpected”. She said she was “very heartened” to have been chosen by the musicians themselves to succeed Cornelius Meister who has led the orchestra since 2010.

“It’s great that the orchestra is stepping out like this,” Alsop said. “It’s wonderful for us to be able to show a woman in a leadership role like this, although I obviously hope that was low down on the list of why I was engaged.

“This will be a relationship born out of a shared goal, to create the best music and find the highest artistic level of excellence we can together,” she added.

Much was made of Alsop’s role as the first woman in 118 years to conduct the Last Night of the Proms in September 2013. That night she said in her speech she hoped the evening would be seen “as a natural progression toward more inclusion in classical music ... here’s to the second, third, fourth, fifth, hundreds (of women) to come.”

Born in New York, Alsop wanted to be a conductor from the age of nine and studied under Leonard Bernstein. Known for a fervent but sober conducting style, and her ardent belief in outreach programmes for young people, she is also chief conductor at both the São Paulo and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras. In 2007 she became the first woman to lead a major US orchestra. She is currently artist in residence at London’s Southbank Centre and has a pivotal role in the global celebrations this year for Bernstein’s centenary.

Calling the classical music world a “microcosm of our greater society, and a very conservative one at that”, Alsop, 61, said the lack of female conductors was a “reflection of the broader world”.

“I think it has more to do with a lack of opportunity and then a comfort level in society of seeing women in certain roles. It takes a long time for us (as a society) to adapt ... we’re very slow to become comfortable. And if there are on top of that very few opportunities to even see a range of women (in leadership roles) the hope of changing society’s comfort level is really minimal.”

Alsop said now that the #MeToo debate had reached the world of classical music, after the suspension of conductor James Levine from New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the decision by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and other ensembles to drop conductor Charles Dutoit over sexual harassment claims, she hoped it would lead to encouraging a greater awareness of the importance of promoting women.

“I think #MeToo is a great step forward, but I worry about the danger that it’s just a short-lived flame. I think we have to also be out there and proactively creating opportunities for women to get the experience they need and for them to be seen. And that applies to women in every field, of every colour, shape, size, age, so that it can turn into a positive movement that is able to educate women and men on how we can move forward in equality terms,” she said.

She added she expected there to be “probably a lot more revelations” of sexual harassment in the classical music world “because it’s historically been the way”, and called on those protecting perpetrators to break their silence.

“Because it takes a lot of people to protect and keep these things quiet. I say we all have to be able to have the courage to stand up and try to help change the landscape for the future.”

Alsop, speaking in Copenhagen where she had been conducting the Danish Symphony Orchestra at the weekend, said she recognised the importance of her role as a cultural ambassador working in Austria at a time when the country is under scrutiny following the recent entry of the far-right Freedom party into government.

“What’s going on in Austria is obviously reflected in what’s going on in the US, in the UK and everywhere,” she said. “People think we in the classical music world are just living in a museum, but that’s a fallacy. Classical musicians tend to be very engaged in the world around them [and] the wonderful thing about classical music is that it really can transcend politics because it’s wordless, so we’re able to reach out across those barriers and these differences and build bridges of communal experience.”