Obit by Martin Anderson in The Independent.

   Hans Vonk
   Admired conductor and prolific recording artist
   31 August 2004

   Hans Vonk, conductor: born Amsterdam 18 June 1942; married
   Jessie Folkerts; died Amsterdam 29 August 2004.

   Illness forced the conductor Hans Vonk from the podium in the
   spring of 2002, ending an outstanding career just before his
   60th birthday - a cruelly early end in a profession that can
   keep its participants active into their nineties.

   Vonk was born in Amsterdam, then under Nazi occupation, in
   1942, into a musical family: his father was a violinist in
   the Concertgebouw Orchestra.  But he died when Hans was only
   three, leaving his mother to raise him and his sister alone.
   Both children went on to study Law at the University of
   Amsterdam, but Hans, a gifted pianist, felt the pull of music
   and, ignoring his mother's objections, transferred to the
   Amsterdam Conservatory.

   After two years of studying the piano, he began to be attracted
   to conducting; though a late starter, and despite receiving
   cold water from some of the staff, he persevered, and proved
   gifted enough to go on to study with Hermann Scherchen and
   Franco Ferrara, two of the most outstanding conductors of the
   day.

   His first public concert came when he was 22.  And his first
   professional appointment came two years later, in 1966, when
   he joined the Netherlands Ballet as conductor and repetiteur.
   The post helped shape his future in another way, too: it was
   here that he met Jessie Folkerts, an extrovert red-headed
   ballerina, German-born, raised in Australia.  Their marriage
   lasted over 30 years, Jessie providing the perfect outgoing
   foil to Vonk's more introspective nature.

   Vonk remained with the ballet for three years, soon adding
   an assistant conductorship at the Concertgebouw to his
   activities.  His operatic debut came with the Netherlands
   Opera in Amsterdam in 1971, with Wolfgang Fortner's opera In
   seinem Garten liebt Don Perlimplin Belisa.  He was beginning
   to become known abroad now, too: his US debut, with the San
   Francisco Symphony Orchestra, came in 1974, and he served as
   Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic in London from
   1976 to 1979.

   Meanwhile, his domestic career was going from strength to
   strength, as conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
   in Hilversum (1973-79) and chief conductor of the Netherlands
   Opera (1976-85) and the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague
   (1980-91).

   His guest appearances took him all over the world.  He may
   not have invaded the headlines as often as more media-minded
   colleagues, but his music-making earned him admiration wherever
   he went.  In Britain he worked with the London Symphony,
   London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and English Chamber Orchestras,
   and in America with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia
   Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra
   and the New York Philharmonic.  In France he guested with the
   Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and in Norway with
   the Oslo Philharmonic.  He returned to the Royal Concertgebouw
   Orchestra in Amsterdam and travelled to Japan and Australia.

   One of Vonk's most prestigious appointments came in 1985,
   when - following in the footsteps of Wagner, Fritz Busch,
   Karl Bohm and Rudolf Kempe - he took up the directorship of
   the Staatskapelle and the Semper Opera in Dresden.  But he
   found the heavy-handed interference of the Communist authorities
   difficult to bear.  He was, for example, allowed to communicate
   with his musicians only at rehearsal, with the discussion
   limited to music.

   The artistic results were superb - a 1985 recording of Strauss's
   Der Rosenkavalier garnered universal praise for the brilliant
   playing Vonk obtained from his orchestra - but five years of
   political meddling were all he could take (he described it
   as "a very stressful period") and in 1991 he assumed the chief
   conductorship of the West German Radio Orchestra in Cologne,
   remaining until 1997.

   Hans Vonk was also a prolific recording artist, earning
   particular praise for his work in the Austro- German symphonic
   repertoire, not least Bruckner and Mahler.  The reaction of
   the American critic Jed Distler to his conducting of Beethoven's
   Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos was typical of the reviews
   he received:

   Hans Vonk's predilection for well-drilled ensemble playing
   manifests itself via the marvellously aligned string tuttis
   in the Fourth's Adagio and in the rhythmic spring and enlivening
   accents he obtains in the "Emperor" concerto's Rondo.  Orchestral
   textures are lean and transparent without compromising one
   iota of the Staatskapelle Dresden's tonal richness.

   In 1996 Vonk was appointed to the post which was to crown his
   all-too-brief career: the chief conductorship of the St Louis
   Symphony Orchestra.  It was a partnership that generated
   respect, even love, on both sides.  Vonk was not the glad-handing
   social twirler that American orchestras can sometimes expect
   their conductors to be; instead, he was a conscientious
   rehearser, working with his musicians ("They are a special
   kind of people and I am one of them", he once said) to perfect
   his interpretations and improve the standards of the playing.

   He was only two years into the St Louis appointment when he
   was diagnosed as having Guillain-Barre syndrome, which enfeebles
   the muscles by removing the protective layer of myelin from
   the nerves.  A course of treatment, reinforced by the constant
   and devoted care of his wife, allowed him to take up the baton
   again in 1989, but he suffered a relapse - and his doctors
   now realised they were unable to diagnose his neuromuscular
   affliction, which was not, in fact, exposing the nerves in
   his hands and feet but coating them, making them progressively
   weaker.  From there, it spread inwards to the rest of his
   body.

   The effects of the disease were made public in February 2002
   when Vonk, conducting Barber's Medea's Meditation and Dance,
   found himself unable to turn the page of the score in front
   of him and had to be helped from the podium.  He struggled
   on, giving his last performances - Mahler's Fourth Symphony
   - in May that year.  At that point, knowing that he was too
   ill to serve the orchestra as he might wish, he bravely offered
   to resign; he was asked to remain as a consultant.

   His recorded legacy stands as an indication of what he might
   have achieved over the years now denied him.

   Martin Anderson

"Stephen E. Bacher" <[log in to unmask]>