Vilém Tauský

Vilém Tauský CBE (20 July 1910, Přerov, Moravia – 16 March 2004, London) was a Czech conductor and composer.

Life

Vilém Tauský was 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 after the fall of France and was later awarded a Czech Military Cross, followed by the Czech Order of Merit at the end of the war. 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.