Otto Tausk
Otto Tausk
Conductor
Otto Tausk is managed in the Benelux by Leontien van der Vliet.
Contact:
E: leontien.vandervliet@interartists.nl
T: +31 6 5 24 68 707
Highlights 2024-25
Vancouver Symphony
20 September – Firebird Symphonic Cinema (Lukas van Woerkom)
Firebird & Rachmaninoff - Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Staatskapelle Weimar
Copland Symphony no. 3
Buffalo Philharmonic
Beethoven Symphony no. 3
https://bpo.org/event/beethoven-symphony-no-3-eroica/2024-11-22/
Danish Radio Symphony
Sibelius Symphony no. 1
https://www.drkoncerthuset.dk/kalender/2025/tausk-sibelius-1-1/tausk-sibelius-1/
Nationaal Jeugd Orkest
Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances
Vancouver Symphony
Shostakovich Symphony no. 5
https://www.tso.ca/concerts-and-events/events/brahms-and-shostakovich/
Reviews
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony
“Tausk can probably conduct a great Shostakovich 5 in his sleep. The nerds amongst us remember his surprisingly excellent performance of the symphony with the VSOI program, back when that was a thing that existed. Friday night’s performance was straight forward and to the point but in all the right ways. This was the kind of performance that didn’t get in the way, and provided the orchestra a chance to go for it at every turn.
The first movement moved at a quick tempo, flowing organically through its changing themes. 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. Oh and those Mariss Jansons esque accelerandos peppered into the finale were a really fun touch.
The most exciting part of Friday’s performance was that the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra sounded as coherent as they have all season. The balances were perfect, the intensity impressive, and gone were some of the wobbles in the woodwinds and brass that have popped up here and there throughout the season. This felt as confident and comfortable as the VSO has been all season. Perhaps it was that Tausk has now been around consistently for the last month, perhaps it was the large special concert audience that provided motivation, or perhaps this is just one of the “VSO pieces.” Whatever it was everyone involved was on fire. Truly exciting stuff all around.
Oh yeah and Vadim Gluzman was there too. Gluzman is one of the most reliable soloists out there and Friday’s performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto was no exception. The first movement took a bit to get going but once the first orchestral outburst came halfway through the movement the VSO jump started what was a pretty great performance from there. The second movement was beautifully sweet and lyrical. Gluzman and the orchestra played off of each other wonderfully. The final movement, the highlight of the performance, Gluzman went full folk delivering a movement that felt almost stuck to the ground in the best ways possible. This was a really good performance from a great soloist that got its due from an enthusiastic Orpheum audience Friday evening. At the end of the day though it was the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s magnificent Shostakovich that stole the show.”
Los Angeles Philharmonic Brahms 3rd Symphony
“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.”
“It was music of enormous life-experience and depth, movingly-realised by conductor Otto Tausk and the BBC SSO.”
Powder her Face - Thomas Adès
Nederlandse Reisopera and Phion
World première: 20 January 2024, Wilminktheater Enschede
“It sounded powerful and with schwung from the pit of the Wilminktheatre, led by guest conductor Otto Tausk.”
“Nearly 30 years after the opera’s premiere, it’s wonderful to see Dutch audiences get a chance to peer agog into the pit to see just how on earth 15 musicians manage the riotous pastiche, the extremities of texture and timbre, the sheer audacity of this musical underworld. Dutch ensemble Phion (Orkest van Gelderland en Overijssel) might be very busy multi-tasking but, under the baton of the ebullient Otto Tausk, they’re having a ball.”
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Mahler 6th Symphony
“Orchestras program Mahler’s Sixth Symphony only rarely. It’s an enormous stretch for players and conductor; despite crushing demands, it’s something to be savoured. With a gigantic orchestra filling every inch of the Orpheum stage over a running time of nearly an hour and a half, the enterprise presented abundant challenges, starting with integrating a plethora of extra players who work only rarely with the ensemble; then there’s the physical matter of player and audience fatigue. Add in Mahler’s penchant for enormous grand effects and, more importantly, moments of sublime subtlety, and you have an endeavour that defines ambitious programming.
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.”