OttoTausk, conductor
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll
Richard Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
Two great composers - Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Richard Strauss (1864-1949) - were born more than a generation apart, but are linked by the power and sway that they exerted over the presentation of musical drama, which extends to the present day. The influential 19th century music critic Hans von Bülow put it this way: “Richard I is Wagner, there is no Richard II, therefore Strauss is Richard III.” Maestro Otto Tausk shares two concert works by these German musical giants.
Otto Tausk, conductor
Dutch conductor Otto Tausk is the Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, now in his third season. He is also the newly announced Chief Conductor of recently formed Phion Orkest van Gelderland & Overijssel. Until spring 2018, Tausk was Music Director of the Opera Theatre and Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen. He appears as a guest with such orchestras as Concertgebouworkest, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Philharmonie Südwestfalen, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the orchestras of Perth, Tasmania, Auckland, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he made his BBC Proms debut in August 2018. He is a hugely respected musical personality in his native Holland, working with all its major orchestras and composers.
In the 2020/21 season, Tausk continues guesting relationships with orchestras such as Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Het Gelders Orkest, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. In Vancouver, Tausk will lead an innovative reimagined season in response to COVID-19, showcasing the orchestra with a curated series of digital performances.
In the opera pit, he will conduct Michel van der Aa’s new opera ‘Upload’, with the world premiere at Dutch National Opera, plus further appearances with the other co-commissioning parties including Oper Köln. In St. Gallen, Tausk conducted the world premiere of ‘Annas Maske’, by Swiss composer David Philip Hefti, the Swiss premiere of George Benjamin’s ‘Written on Skin’, Korngold’s ‘Die Tote Stadt’ and other titles including ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’, ‘Eugene Onegin’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Lohengrin’ and ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’.
Tausk has recorded with the Concertgebouworkest (Luc Brewaeys, and an animated version of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’), Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen (Korngold and Diepenbrock), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Mendelssohn) and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (Gavin Bryars) amongst others. For the cpo label in 2011 Hans Pfitzner’s enchanting Orchesterlieder garnered international praise, not least the Classica France’s ‘Choc du mois’. His Prokofiev disc with Rosanne Philippens also received BBC Music Magazine Concerto Disc of the Month (2018).
Born in Utrecht, Otto Tausk initially studied violin and then conducting with Jonas Aleksa. Between 2004 and 2006, Tausk was assistant conductor to Valery Gergiev with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, a period of study that had a profound impact on him. In 2011 Tausk was presented with the ‘De Olifant’ prize by the City of Haarlem. He received this prestigious award for his contribution to the Arts in the Netherlands, in particular his extensive work with Holland Symfonia serving as Music Director 2007 to 2012. In reflecting on their work together in The Netherlands, Valery Gergiev paid particular tribute to Tausk on this occasion.
ottotausk.nl
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1919, the Grammy and Juno-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the third largest orchestra in Canada, the largest arts organization in Western Canada, and one of the few orchestras in the world to have its own music school.
Led by Music Director Otto Tausk since 2018, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts each year, throughout Vancouver and the province of British Columbia, reaching over 270,000 people annually. On tour the VSO has performed in the United States, China, Korea and across Canada.
The orchestra presents passionate, high-quality performances of classical, popular and culturally diverse music, creating meaningful engagement with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll
b. May 22, 1813 / Leipzig, Germany
d. February 13, 1883 / Venice, Italy
Imagine, if you will, waking up to the sounds of music, gently wafting into your bedroom. The country house you call home is decorated for both birthday and Christmas celebrations. Without your knowledge, fifteen musicians have silently arranged themselves on the grand staircase. The sounds that slowly emerge, floating on the morning air like a love letter in music, are meant only for you!
That was how Richard Wagner honoured his second wife, Cosima for her 33rd birthday. As she recalled in her diary, “When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew even louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, Richard came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his “Symphonic Birthday Greeting”…I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household…”
Cosima had already been married to the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. But over the course of several years her admiration for and relationship with Wagner deepened, so much so that three of her five children had been fathered by Wagner. With the granting of a divorce in 1870, they were able to marry in a Protestant Church in Switzerland, and set up their life together in Villa Tribschen, near Lucerne.
The score’s full title - "Tribschen Idyll, with Fidi's Bird-song and Orange Sunrise, presented as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870" – contains a couple of other personal details. “Fidi” was the nickname of their recently born son, Siegfried, while “orange sunrise” refers to the striped wallpaper in Cosima’s bedroom, where she first heard this dawn serenade. It was never intended for public performance, but it has since become one of Wagner’s best known and frequently performed works – no doubt both for its beauty and its uncharacteristic brevity!
Richard Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
b. June 11, 1864 / Munich, Germany
d. September 8, 1949 / Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
Wagner and Richard Strauss were born more than a generation apart, but they are linked by the power and sway that they exerted over the presentation of musical drama over the course of some 100+ years.
Richard Strauss grew up in a very musical household. His father, Franz, was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich, and as such Richard heard his first Wagner operas – Lohegrin and Tannhäuser - at the age of ten. Despite his Franz’s very conservative views and hostility to Wagner’s music, Richard Strauss was attentive to Wagner’s innovations, without being an acolyte. It was in the years following Wagner’s death in 1883 that his widow Cosima and the pro-Wagner camp, earmarked Richard Strauss as the heir apparent to Wagner’s musical crown.
Strauss had parallel careers as a conductor and composer. Outside of his work for the operatic stage, he became known for his many orchestral tone poems – usually an extended, single-movement piece that evokes a scene, storyline, or heroic struggle. Strauss reached back into medieval German folklore in one of his most popular musical tales: Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.
Till is something of a trickster figure – a court jester, class clown, and crusader against social hypocrisy. His surname, Eulenspiegel, refers to the wise old owl holding a mirror that forces people to see how their behaviour reveals who they truly are. Till thumbs his nose at just about every level of society, from Milkmaid to Priest or King – and ultimately swings from the gallows for it. Many hours have been spent parsing out a “storyline” from the musical cues that Strauss provided. At the work’s 1895 premiere in Cologne, the composer advised listeners “…all that is necessary to the understanding of the work is to indicate the two Eulenspiegel themes which are run right through the work in all manner of disguises, moods and situations until the catastrophe, when Till is strung up after sentence has been passed on him. Apart from that let the gay Cologners guess what the rogue has done to them by way of musical tricks.”
Following the “once upon a time” opening, listen for the cackling laughter of Till Eulenspiegel, first in the horn, and later from the clarinet. Was Strauss playing a musical joke on his colleagues, or perhaps thumbing his nose at the excesses of Wagner and his followers? That is a discussion for another day.
Notes: Matthew Baird
OttoTausk, conductor
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll
Richard Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
Two great composers - Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Richard Strauss (1864-1949) - were born more than a generation apart, but are linked by the power and sway that they exerted over the presentation of musical drama, which extends to the present day. The influential 19th century music critic Hans von Bülow put it this way: “Richard I is Wagner, there is no Richard II, therefore Strauss is Richard III.” Maestro Otto Tausk shares two concert works by these German musical giants.
Otto Tausk, conductor
Dutch conductor Otto Tausk is the Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, now in his third season. He is also the newly announced Chief Conductor of recently formed Phion Orkest van Gelderland & Overijssel. Until spring 2018, Tausk was Music Director of the Opera Theatre and Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen. He appears as a guest with such orchestras as Concertgebouworkest, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Philharmonie Südwestfalen, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the orchestras of Perth, Tasmania, Auckland, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he made his BBC Proms debut in August 2018. He is a hugely respected musical personality in his native Holland, working with all its major orchestras and composers.
In the 2020/21 season, Tausk continues guesting relationships with orchestras such as Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Het Gelders Orkest, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. In Vancouver, Tausk will lead an innovative reimagined season in response to COVID-19, showcasing the orchestra with a curated series of digital performances.
In the opera pit, he will conduct Michel van der Aa’s new opera ‘Upload’, with the world premiere at Dutch National Opera, plus further appearances with the other co-commissioning parties including Oper Köln. In St. Gallen, Tausk conducted the world premiere of ‘Annas Maske’, by Swiss composer David Philip Hefti, the Swiss premiere of George Benjamin’s ‘Written on Skin’, Korngold’s ‘Die Tote Stadt’ and other titles including ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’, ‘Eugene Onegin’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Lohengrin’ and ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’.
Tausk has recorded with the Concertgebouworkest (Luc Brewaeys, and an animated version of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’), Tonhalle Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen (Korngold and Diepenbrock), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Mendelssohn) and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (Gavin Bryars) amongst others. For the cpo label in 2011 Hans Pfitzner’s enchanting Orchesterlieder garnered international praise, not least the Classica France’s ‘Choc du mois’. His Prokofiev disc with Rosanne Philippens also received BBC Music Magazine Concerto Disc of the Month (2018).
Born in Utrecht, Otto Tausk initially studied violin and then conducting with Jonas Aleksa. Between 2004 and 2006, Tausk was assistant conductor to Valery Gergiev with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, a period of study that had a profound impact on him. In 2011 Tausk was presented with the ‘De Olifant’ prize by the City of Haarlem. He received this prestigious award for his contribution to the Arts in the Netherlands, in particular his extensive work with Holland Symfonia serving as Music Director 2007 to 2012. In reflecting on their work together in The Netherlands, Valery Gergiev paid particular tribute to Tausk on this occasion.
ottotausk.nl
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Founded in 1919, the Grammy and Juno-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the third largest orchestra in Canada, the largest arts organization in Western Canada, and one of the few orchestras in the world to have its own music school.
Led by Music Director Otto Tausk since 2018, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts each year, throughout Vancouver and the province of British Columbia, reaching over 270,000 people annually. On tour the VSO has performed in the United States, China, Korea and across Canada.
The orchestra presents passionate, high-quality performances of classical, popular and culturally diverse music, creating meaningful engagement with audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll
b. May 22, 1813 / Leipzig, Germany
d. February 13, 1883 / Venice, Italy
Imagine, if you will, waking up to the sounds of music, gently wafting into your bedroom. The country house you call home is decorated for both birthday and Christmas celebrations. Without your knowledge, fifteen musicians have silently arranged themselves on the grand staircase. The sounds that slowly emerge, floating on the morning air like a love letter in music, are meant only for you!
That was how Richard Wagner honoured his second wife, Cosima for her 33rd birthday. As she recalled in her diary, “When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew even louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, Richard came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his “Symphonic Birthday Greeting”…I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household…”
Cosima had already been married to the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. But over the course of several years her admiration for and relationship with Wagner deepened, so much so that three of her five children had been fathered by Wagner. With the granting of a divorce in 1870, they were able to marry in a Protestant Church in Switzerland, and set up their life together in Villa Tribschen, near Lucerne.
The score’s full title - "Tribschen Idyll, with Fidi's Bird-song and Orange Sunrise, presented as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870" – contains a couple of other personal details. “Fidi” was the nickname of their recently born son, Siegfried, while “orange sunrise” refers to the striped wallpaper in Cosima’s bedroom, where she first heard this dawn serenade. It was never intended for public performance, but it has since become one of Wagner’s best known and frequently performed works – no doubt both for its beauty and its uncharacteristic brevity!
Richard Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
b. June 11, 1864 / Munich, Germany
d. September 8, 1949 / Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
Wagner and Richard Strauss were born more than a generation apart, but they are linked by the power and sway that they exerted over the presentation of musical drama over the course of some 100+ years.
Richard Strauss grew up in a very musical household. His father, Franz, was the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich, and as such Richard heard his first Wagner operas – Lohegrin and Tannhäuser - at the age of ten. Despite his Franz’s very conservative views and hostility to Wagner’s music, Richard Strauss was attentive to Wagner’s innovations, without being an acolyte. It was in the years following Wagner’s death in 1883 that his widow Cosima and the pro-Wagner camp, earmarked Richard Strauss as the heir apparent to Wagner’s musical crown.
Strauss had parallel careers as a conductor and composer. Outside of his work for the operatic stage, he became known for his many orchestral tone poems – usually an extended, single-movement piece that evokes a scene, storyline, or heroic struggle. Strauss reached back into medieval German folklore in one of his most popular musical tales: Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.
Till is something of a trickster figure – a court jester, class clown, and crusader against social hypocrisy. His surname, Eulenspiegel, refers to the wise old owl holding a mirror that forces people to see how their behaviour reveals who they truly are. Till thumbs his nose at just about every level of society, from Milkmaid to Priest or King – and ultimately swings from the gallows for it. Many hours have been spent parsing out a “storyline” from the musical cues that Strauss provided. At the work’s 1895 premiere in Cologne, the composer advised listeners “…all that is necessary to the understanding of the work is to indicate the two Eulenspiegel themes which are run right through the work in all manner of disguises, moods and situations until the catastrophe, when Till is strung up after sentence has been passed on him. Apart from that let the gay Cologners guess what the rogue has done to them by way of musical tricks.”
Following the “once upon a time” opening, listen for the cackling laughter of Till Eulenspiegel, first in the horn, and later from the clarinet. Was Strauss playing a musical joke on his colleagues, or perhaps thumbing his nose at the excesses of Wagner and his followers? That is a discussion for another day.
Notes: Matthew Baird
