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]>
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