Concert Review: Otto Tausk Conducts The BPO

Songs of Heroes In An Age of Anxiety

Tim Fain and Otto Tausk with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, November 22, 2024, Kleinhans Music Hall.

Vancouver Symphony conductor Otto Tausk took the podium at Kleinhans Music Hall Friday morning Coffee Concert (November 22, 2024). The program featured grand, cinematic compositions that conjured heroes from the stage.

The BPO sounded relaxed and well-rehearsed under Tausk’s baton, no easy feat for a visiting conductor.

Wagenaar’s Overture to “Cyrano de Bergerac”

The program began with a performance of Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar’s Overture to “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Wagenaar’s narrative tone poem of the famous love story is similar in form to Beethoven’s Egmont Overture (performed by the BPO at its November 9th 90th Anniversary concert) and Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote,” which the BPO performed March 1, 2024.

The “Egmont Overture” (1810), “Don Quixote” (1897), and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1905) are orchestral tone poems, or musical soundtracks to familiar tales with individual instrum…