June 2005 News Archive
Page last updated December 1 2005
Vilém Tauský’s ashes to be interred in Brno
The death of Dr. Vilém Tauský CBE FGSM (1910 – 2004) was a great loss to the Dvořák Society. This distinguished conductor and accomplished composer was a direct link to the world of Leoš Janáček (he was probably the last surviving musician to have known the great composer), Vítězslav Novák, Bohuslav Martinů, Jaromír Weinberger, Erwin Schulhoff, Vítězslava Kaprálová and many other distinguished figures. He brought this priceless experience to his role as Vice-President of the Dvořák Society.
The writer of this web page had the great good fortune to meet Vilém Tauský at an Annual General Meeting of the Society just a few years ago. Although physically frail, he had remained intellectually active and spoke to me about his pleasure in learning that his old friend Erwin Schulhoff’s opera Flammen (Plameny) had been recorded by Decca in their Entartete Musik series. He had been the assistant at the 1932 première of the work in Brno.
Vilém Tauský was born in Přerov, Moravia in 1910 and began his musical career as a repetiteur at the Brno Opera House at the age of 18, first conducting at 19. Although he lived in Britain from 1940 until his death, it seems appropriate that his ashes are to be interred in Brno, as we have just learned from Brenda Rayson. The interment will take place in Brno Central Cemetery on Wednesday 20th July 2005, following a reception at the Janáček Foundation.
Those interested in learning more about Vilém Tauský and his extraordinary career, should read the obituary by Graham Melville-Mason (Dvořák Society Chairman). This was originally published in The Independent newspaper on 20th March 2004 and is now available on the web site of the Jewish Music Institute (JMI) at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London www.jmi.org.uk. This very important web site has a whole section devoted to the JMI’s International Forum for Suppressed Music, which can be accessed through the “Suppressed Music” link on the JMI’s home page, but can also be accessed directly through its own web page www.jmi.org.uk/suppressedmusic/ifsm.html. The on-line Newsletters are an extremely valuable resource, with much to interest those wishing to know more about the whole subject of suppressed music as well as the Czech composers caught up in the terrible events of the time. www.dvorak-society.org