Vilém Tauský

Vilém Tauský CBE (20 July 1910 – 16 March 2004) was a Czech conductor and composer. From the advent of the Second World War, he lived and worked in the United Kingdom, and was one of a significant group of émigré composers and musicians who settled there.

Early life and wartime Vilém Tauský was born on 20 July 1910 in Přerov, Moravia, Austria-Hungary. He came from a musical family: his Viennese mother had sung Mozart at the Vienna State Opera under Gustav Mahler, and her cousin was the operetta composer Leo Fall.

Tauský studied with Leoš Janáček and later became a repetiteur at the Brno Opera. His other teachers included Vilém Petrzelka (composition) and Zdeněk Chalabala (conducting). At the age of nineteen, he conducted Puccini's Turandot in Brno on short notice in place of Chalabala, who had become ill. Tauský was of Jewish ancestry, and the rise of the Nazis forced him to move to France. He later volunteered for service with the Free Czech Army. He eventually reached the UK in 1940 after the fall of France, arriving with other soldiers on a Yugoslav coal ship to Newport, Monmouthshire.

He served musical functions in the Czechoslovak Army in exile, as a military band conductor in France. Bohuslav Martinů composed his Field Mass for Tauský and his regimental band, but the fall of France prevented them from giving the premiere. He continued as a band and choir leader in the UK.

During the Coventry Blitz on the night of 14 November 1940, Tauský was based ten miles away in Leamington Spa with the Czech Free Army. His unit was mobilized to search the ruins for survivors. He wrote his Coventry Meditation for strings to commemorate the civilian casualties and the destruction of the Cathedral. The work was first performed by the Menges Quartet on 17 March 1942 at a Myra Hess National Gallery Concert in London. The piece was revived in November 2021 by the Jubilee Quartet in Leamington. During the conflict he was awarded a Czech Military Cross, followed by the Czech Order of Merit at the end of the war.

Opera From 1945 to 1949, Tauský was musical director of the Carl Rosa Opera Company, and following several years conducting regional BBC orchestras in Belfast, Glasgow and Manchester he was appointed music director of Welsh National Opera (1951-1956). On 26 December 1953 he became possibly the only conductor to conduct two operas on the same day, with a performance of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel in the afternoon at Sadler's Wells and Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore at Covent Garden in the evening. He was artistic director of the Phoenix Opera touring company from 1966 to 1975.

Tauský introduced many Czech operas to the UK, including Smetana's The Kiss in 1948, Janáček's Osud in 1972 and Smetana's The Brandenburgers in Bohemia in 1994. In total Tauský was responsible for twenty-six British opera and operetta premières.

Light music Tauský was the first foreign conductor to conduct the Band of the Coldstream Guards in 100 years and was an instructor/adjudicator at Kneller Hall for some years, as well as an adjudicator at the annual Brass Band competitions. He was principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1956 to 1966. He regularly appeared with this orchestra on the BBC Light Programme's long-running weekly show Friday Night is Music Night. Between 1966 and 1992, he was the director of opera and head of the conducting course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. As a composer, his most popular success was the Harmonica Concertino he wrote for Tommy Reilly in 1973, which was also used for a ballet in New York.

Andrew Lamb points out that, following his ten years with the BBC Concert Orchestra during which he raised its profile and range considerably, he was forever after branded as a light music specialist. He "never regained the profile he had previously enjoyed in more serious music, for which he was eminently qualified". With his wife as co-author he published his memoirs under the title Vilém Tauský Tells his Story in 1978. That same year he was honoured as a Freeman of the City of London, and in 1981 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Selected works 1925 - Cello Sonata No 1 1930 - Symfonieta for orchestra 1930 - Three Songs for soprano & piano 1932-8 - Three operettas (for Brno Opera House): Marcella, Keep Smiling, Little Girl in Blue 1934 - Christopher Columbus, play with music 1935 -The Lost World, music for documentary film 1939 - Variations for Piano on an Original Theme 1940 - Two Military Marches: The Czechs are Marching, Call to Arms 1941 - Coventry: A Meditation for String Quartet 1942 - Variations on a Welsh Tune, piano 1943 - Interim Balance, music for documentary film 1945 - Rhapsody on Tunes by Smetana for piano & orchestra 1950 - Concert Overture for Brass Band 1957 - Fantasia da Burlesca for violin & orchestra 1957 - Oboe Concerto (arrangement of work by Vanhal, freely adapted for Evelyn Rothwell) 1964 - Cello Sonata No 2 1965 - Essay for solo viola 1965 - String Quartet 1973 - Concertino for Harmonica, Strings, Harp & Percussion (written for Tommy Reilly) 1975 - Ballade for cello and piano 1978 - From Our Village, three movement suite for orchestra 1980 - Suite for Violin & Piano 1998 - Serenade for Strings