About

ABOUT

Otto Tausk

“The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conjured up clouds of fluid, silky sounds of all dynamic ranges. All these extreme contrasts were brought together with great precision, masterly framed by Otto Tausk.”

- Olga de Kort, Bachtrack

Dutch conductor.
Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Artistic Advisor VSO School of Music.
Previously Music Director of Holland Symfonia (Netherlands) and the Theater und Orchester Sankt Gallen (Switserland) where he conducted numerous operas including the world premiere Annas Maske by Swiss composer David Hefti, the Swiss premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, and other titles: Don Giovanni, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Eugene Onegin, West Side Story, Lohengrin and Ariadne auf Naxos.
Guest conductor with: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, WASO in Perth, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and BBC Scottish symphonies, Stuttgart Philharmoniker, National Orchestra of Belgium, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Staatskapelle Weimar, Bremer Philharmoniker
In the summer of 2024 Tausk continued his relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with several sold out performances at the Hollywood Bowl featuring the music of Tchaikovsky
During the season 23/24 Tausk led a highly successful tour of the opera Powder her Face by Thomas Ades through the Netherlands at the Reisopera and led the world premiere of the rediscovered opera Het Pand der Goden by the Surinam composer Johannes Helstone with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Concertgebouw, broadcasted on television in Paramaribo
The 2018/2019 season saw Tausk’s London concert debut at the BBC Proms, conducting BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben. In Vancouver he has invited soloists like: Yo-Yo Ma, Renee Fleming, Itzhak Perlman, Daniel Trifonov, Gidon Kremer, James Ehnes, Anne Sophie Mutter, Hilary Hann, Katia Buniatishvili and Hélène Grimaud
In spring 2019 he returned to the Dutch National Opera with the world premiere Curuso in Cuba by fellow Dutchman Micha Hamel and in spring 2022 he conducted the world premiere of the opera Upload by Michel van der Aa in Amsterdam, followed by performances in Cologne, Bregenz and New York
Recorded with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (Luc Braeways, and an animated version of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’), Tonhalle Orchestra St Gallen (Korngold and Diepenbrock), BBC Scottish (Mendelssohn), the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (Gavin Bryers) and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (thomas Agerfeldt Olesen)
For the cpo label in 2011 Hans Pfitzner’s enchanting Orchesterlieder garnered international praise, not least the Classica France’s “Choc du mois”. His recent Prokofiev disc with Rosanne Philippens also received BBC Music Magazine Concerto Disc of the Month (2018).
Born in Utrecht, initially studied violin with Viktor Liberman and Istvan Parkanyi.
Studied conducting with Kenneth Montgomery, Jurjen Hempel and with Jonas Aleksa in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Between 2004 – 2007 assistant conductor to Valery Gergiev with the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
Presented ‘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.

REVIEWS

Quotes

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Shostakovich 5

Fred Cholowski, Vancouver Subscene, July 2024

Tausk can probably conduct a great Shostakovich 5 in his sleep. Tausk has always had a grasp of the modernist Soviet scherzo and here was no exception, this was played with the gusto required. The Third movement, the gnarliest music of the work, had all of the emotional depth that it needed and more. The now mighty VSO strings searing through the movement’s climaxes in a way that seemed impossible 10 years ago. Also something that felt impossible for the longest time was a finale where everything didn’t get swallowed by percussion and brass. The VSO is now an orchestra that can go full bombast with the clarity of a truly great orchestra. Tausk, for his part, played the final movement with an intelligent ambiguity that made the movement feel like an internal struggle between joy and terror.

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Thorvaldsdottir, Catamorphosis

Mahler 6

Sep 19, 2023

David Gordon Duke.

Tausk purposefully made his orchestra the star of the evening. His decision to opt for ultra-serious repertoire was a bold statement about what an important regional orchestra can and should do.

The starter, a complementary pairing for the Mahler behemoth to come, demonstrated the VSO’s connection to the wider world of contemporary music. Tausk got it exactly right in his brief platform introduction: Catamorphosis is essentially film music, all atmospheric effects and cunningly worked out textures, slow moving but with flashes of quicker patterns and the occasional triad.Tausk’s gambit worked. The impressive opening movement, itself almost the length of a classical era symphony, was crammed with expression and theatricality. There is ongoing dispute about the preferred order of the middle movements of the work; Tausk opted for the exquisite slow movement in second place, here with truly exemplary solo playing by the VSO’s new principal horn, Alexander Wide. While much of the Sixth relies on shock and awe, the Andante moderato points the way to the composer’s late idiom, myriad precisely calibrated chamber combinations. The dark but always theatrical danse macabre Scherzo led to the nihilist finale; of complementary weight to the first movement, it provides the tragic, seemingly inexorable denouement of the symphony.How would the opening night audience respond to what has to be one of the grimmest endings of any orchestral work? An instant and heartfelt standing ovation demonstrated that Friday’s masterpiece audience knew exactly what Tausk and his musicians had dared to do, and the value of their accomplishment.

Los Angeles Philharmonic, 24-3-2023

Brahms 3

Grime, Meditations on Joy; Grieg pianoconcerto, lang Lang; Bruch violin concerto, Simone Lamsma

“The second half of the concert, Brahms Third Symphony, revealed Dutch conductor Otto Tausk (currently music director of the Vancouver Symphony) at his best, for it was a natural, emotional, and lyrical interpretation: voyages of discovery, loving traversals of a familiar, exciting work with a fresh eye and mind, in the company of the fine musicians of the LA Phil (several new additions in the wind section, the superlative brass playing, and the bilateral arrangement of the violins all added to the sonic splendor.) With Dudamel leaving L.A. in three years, many guest conductors such as Tausk will no doubt be putting their best foot forward, hoping to be considered viable candidates for the music director of one of world’s top orchestras.”

www.classicalvoice.org

“It was music of enormous life-experience and depth, movingly-realised by conductor Otto Tausk and the BBC SSO.”

— Herald Scotland | It was music of enormous life-experience and depth, movingly-realised by conductor Otto Tausk and the BBC SSO

“Tausk and the MSO gave a superbly detailed, powerful and well-judged performance of the work.”

— David Barmby, Limelight Magazine | Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Debussy: La Mer

“After interval, the orchestra brought us Poulenc’s Sinfonietta, with nothing but incredible flow across the sections, gentle wind and trumpet solos, and a warm body of sound from all. In the absence of ego and excessive stage presence, Tausk’s musical presence brought a new kind of sound from the players – incredibly tight and controlled and exploding with personality. To leave you unashamedly with a pun, I was truly impressed.”

— Stephanie Eslake | Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra | Poulenc, Hosokawa, Ravel

“The music is warmly Romantic and highly evocative, and Tausk and the BBCNOW gave us an assured and atmospheric reading.”

— Nick Boston, Bachtrack | BBC Proms | Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben

“With his sensitive conducting, Otto Tausk succeeded in maintaining this melancholic tone throughout the evening, never letting it slip into extreme misery or kitsch by means of a speedy tempo and a very beautifully elaborated transparency of the sound.”

— Oper Aktuell | Sankt Gallen | Eugene Onegin

“The orchestra conducted by Otto Tauskshows itself on brilliant form. It brings to light all the shades of the score, the delicate, the poetic as well as the strikingly impressive.”

— Ostschweiz | Richard Wagner, Lohengrin | Sankt Gallen