Midway through the VSO’S 100th season, Otto Tausk talks opera, Mahler, and the conductor’s role.
Expect Mahler and more as the Dutch conductor shapes the Spring Festival and the season to come
We could, I suppose, call this story “Tracking Otto Tausk”. Our task takes us into the bowels of an Amsterdam theatre, through the thorns of a malfunctioning voice recorder, and across two different dodgy Skype hookups, until finally we arrive, digitally, at his home—where he’s a perfectly genial host.
And in our conversation, once we finally have him, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s new music director delivers more than a handful of clues about where he’s been and what he’ll be up to next. It’s not necessarily significant that he’s in his hometown: unlike his predecessor Bramwell Tovey, Tausk is opting to fly in for his VSO appearances rather than invest in expensive Vancouver real estate. But it’s telling that he’s presently rehearsing the Dutch National Opera for this week’s world premiere of Micha Hamel’s Caruso a Cuba—a sign that he has both an ear for new music and an eclectic musical background.
“What I’ve learned from opera is that you need to have incredibly clear and eloquent technique, because there are so many things happening at the same time,” Tausk explains, noting that the lessons he’s acquired in the pit are applicable to the concert stage. “There’s always a limited amount of rehearsal time, so you need to be fast when you do opera. And always something happens. There’s always a singer that comes in a bar late, or somebody that speeds up suddenly or is really slow.…so it has to be incredibly clear what you want and what’s going on.”
In his first season with the VSO, which also happens to be the orchestra’s centenary year, Tausk has already shown himself to be a precise, detail-oriented conductor, attuned to a work’s inner voices as well as its overall shape. That he’s also a good leader is evident in the way that he eagerly offers to share the credit.
“What I found is an orchestra that has a history,” he says. “Especially now, in the 100th-anniversary season, you sense that history.…there are all the stories about who came to the orchestra in the past—stravinsky and Rachmaninoff and Glenn Gould and Bernstein—and all these great artists, they left a certain mark on the orchestra. And Bramwell’s tenure was of course a really long one, and that means he has done something really well with the orchestra—and it shows, because the orchestra is in very good shape. The level of training is very high. They are capable of playing a very diverse repertoire, and they are very quick with getting a piece together in a very limited amount of rehearsal time, which is great.”
As for what comes next, Tausk displays a winning combination of modesty and ambition. “I also like that the orchestra is, in a very large way, independent of the conductor,” he notes. “I feel that an orchestra gives much more energy to the audience when it works as if it were a chamber-music group—an ensemble playing together, listening to each other, not depending on a conductor as much. As a conductor, I try to get out of the way.
“Of course, the conductor is necessary,” he continues. “You need somebody to steer the ship, and you need to find a direction that everybody has to go for. In rehearsing with 80 people, if everybody wants to say something, then you need 100 rehearsals—which would probably be really interesting, but it’s not that practical. So somebody needs to make decisions of what to rehearse, and how, and when. I love to make the artistic side of the planning: the programs, the guest artists… I really like thinking about those things, and shaping the season of the orchestra.” THE VSO’S 2019-20 season will see a carefully balanced blend of the old and the new—and a number of programs that suggest future developments. Opening in the fall with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, for instance, hints at Tausk’s respect for the great works of the orchestral repertoire, Mahler himself, and his own Dutch lineage. “Mahler had a very close connection to my hometown, to Amsterdam, and did a lot of his works there; he conducted a lot with the orchestras,” he says. “I’ve seen the scores of Mengelberg and van Beinum and all these old conductors that did the Mahler symphonies, and I hope to bring something of that to Vancouver.”
Translation: there’ll probably be even more Mahler in our near future. Another of Tausk’s ideas worth expanding on is that of having living composers comment on the historical figures that shaped their work. He’ll begin by bringing in Australian composer-conductor Brett Dean to lead a program of Ludwig van Beethoven and original works. “I think that’s very interesting,” Tausk says, “because I always feel I can learn a great deal from the way that composers look at other composers.”
Before the fall, however, we’ll also get a chance to enjoy the VSO’S Spring Festival, which under Tausk has become more conceptual and less composer-centric than past incarnations. Music and Power is this year’s theme, but rather than go all didactic, the focus is on stimulating a necessary discussion of orchestral music’s role in society. After programs that pair the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn, banned under the Nazis, with fascist darling Richard Wagner, and that consider the mix of propaganda and protest that characterized Russian music under Stalin, Tausk will end Spring Festival with the audacious combination of Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor.
What links Ives’s proto-existentialist meditation and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”? Tausk answers this question in a typically Dutch and democratic way.
“What is this question that we can’t answer?” he says. “For me, it has always been a question about how do we survive in this society. How do we survive with ourselves? How do we survive with each other? How do we commit to our inner self? How do we commit to other people? That’s the big question, and the answer, for me, has always been music. So Beethoven, in a way—the idea of music making brotherhood—is the answer to the question. But that’s something that everybody can decide for themselves.” g The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Spring Festival takes place at the Orpheum from April 5 to 13.
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ANDREW DOWNING’S NOSFERATU (At the Orpheum on March 23) The Vancouver Bach Choir teams up with an all-star cast of local improvisers—including clarinetist François Houle and trumpeter Brad Turner—to provide a postmodern score for the famous 1922 silent movie. The Draw: Bassist-composer Andrew Downing’s Technicolor sound meets filmmaker F.W. Murnau’s indelible black-and-white images. Target Audience: Definitely not the tonedand-tanned crowd.
JONATHAN AND JAN-PAUL ROOZEMAN (At the Vancouver Playhouse on March 31) No matter their genre, it seems that musical siblings always have unequalled musical chemistry, and this Vancouver Recital Society concert offers a chance to test that theory. The Draw: Only 20, Jonathan Roozeman is already being hailed as a distinctive voice on the cello, and his pianist brother Jan-paul seems similarly blessed. Target Audience: Talent scouts with an ear for classic but underexposed repertoire. A MONTH OF TUESDAYS (At the Fox Cabaret from April 2 to 30) Lucky us: this year, April has not four but five Tuesdays, giving us an extra opportunity to enjoy Music on Main’s annual spring showcase of emerging artists and established innovators. The Draw: Just buy a series pass. But if you have to pick two of the five, we’ll suggest violinist Jennifer Koh, who’ll present an exceptional survey of short works for the modern virtuoso on April 9, and Emerge on Main on April 23, featuring uncategorizable artists-to-watch Matthew Ariaratnam, Julia Chien, and Alex Mah. Target Audience: Open ears. VSO SPRING FESTIVAL (At the Orpheum on April 5, 6, 12, and 13) The VSO’S annual Spring Festival gets a makeover, as it shifts focus from surveying great classical-music individuals to considering how music and society work together in concert—or sometimes at cross-purposes. The Draw: Smart programming, especially the Revolutionaries show on April 12, which looks at three sly, subversive, and once bannedin-the-u.s.s.r works from Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Sergei Prokofiev. Target Audience: Progressive conservatives, but not the now-extinct political kind. EVENING WITH ELEKTRA (At the Sutton Place Hotel on April 7) It’s a spendy affair, with tickets going for $250, but for that you get dinner, choral brilliance from Elektra Women’s Choir, and an intimate audience with star soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian. The Draw: Bayrakdarian, who has a larger-than-life voice and stage presence to match. Target Audience: Patrons of the arts. CRISTINA PATO QUARTET (At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on April 11) We happen to love the bagpipes, but we were born in Aberdeen and so have no choice in the matter. You, on the other hand, have options, but it wouldn’t hurt to check out one of the leading practitioners of their Galician cousin, the gaita. The Draw: A subtler, warmer, and jazzier take on the famous Celtic skirl. Target Audience: Curious crossover fans. CANTUS & CHOR LEONI (At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on April 12) The opening concert in the 2019 Vanman Male Choral Summit pairs the local lions with their American counterparts in Cantus—a group originally convened by Chor Leoni artistic director Erick Lichte during his student days. The Draw: What’s the opposite of toxic masculinity? Target Audience: Healthy, harmonious men. MUSIC FOR A VERY GOOD FRIDAY (At the Orpheum on April 19) Jon Washburn ends his 48-year tenure with the Vancouver Chamber Choir in a program that features a few of his favourite things—including Johann Sebastian Bach’s Missa Brevis in G Minor and two of his own folk-song arrangements. The Draw: A chance to say thanks to one of the giants of choral music in Canada. Target Audience: A large and appreciative crowd.
PANTAYO (At the Orpheum Annex on April 27) We haven’t yet heard this “all-women lo-fi R&B gong punk collective”, but since we like all of those adjectives, we’re definitely going to check out the Toronto group’s local debut. The Draw: This Vancouver New Music–sponsored event features a radical take on Filipino percussion music, bolstered by deep electronic grooves. Target Audience: Those of us ready to go somewhere we’ve never been before.
FAUST (At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on April 27, May 2, and May 5) Naked ambition and desire lead an amoral schemer to sell his soul to the devil, only to find out that his gains mean nothing. Charles Gounod premiered his Mephistophelian masterpiece in 1859, but his plot hasn’t aged a day. The Draw: Marianne Fiset, who delighted in 2017’s Turandot, returns, with David Pomeroy in the title role. There’s a good chance their Faust will be the highlight of the 2019 Vancouver Opera Festival, which also includes nine performances of Gioacchino Rossini’s La Cenerentola. Target Audience: Those who know that the devil has the best tunes.
VENICE IN THE EAST (At Christ Church Cathedral on May 10) Frankly, I’d like to head to Crete right now, but I suppose we’ll have to wait until May 10, when Early Music Vancouver presents Cappella Romana in a program of medieval Byzantine chant from the Mediterranean island and its Ionian neighbours. The Draw: Although this music will speak more of shady cloisters than sunlit beaches, it will still buoy the heart. Target Audience: Dreamers and the devout, who are not necessarily the same. SCANDINAVIAN TREASURES (At the Scandinavian Community Centre on May 25) Although this Burnaby venue is better known for baking classes than vocal beauty, we’ve got to give kudos to Vancouver Cantata Singers for finding an appropriate venue for their survey of the Nordic choral scene. The Draw: If we’re lucky, there’ll be pulla and coffee. If not, we’ll still get to hear extraordinary compositions, beautifully sung. Target Audience: Vikings, and those who love them. g