Vancouver Symphony Orchestra announces first European tour in April
Stops include a three-night residency at Austria’s Salzburg Easter Festival, as well as Croatia, Slovenia, Liechtenstein, and Germany
VSO music director Otto Tausk.
THE VANCOUVER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA is set to take its first European tour in its 107-year history in April 2026, including a stint as Orchestra-in-Residence at the prestigious Salzburg Easter Festival.
The trip will take place from April 12 to 20, with performances in Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Germany at a range of modern and historic halls in Europe. The orchestra will play three nights at the Großes Festspielhaus (Great Festival Hall) in Salzburg, an architecturally renowned venue that’s built partly into the Mönchsberg mountain. The Easter celebration of opera and classical music there was founded in 1967 by iconic late conductor Herbert von Karajan.
“In Salzburg and the other places, where we’re playing are really gorgeous, phenomenal, famous concert halls, and they get lots of audience—it’s where everything happens,” VSO music director Otto Tausk told Stir today, lauding the “celebration of culture, unity, and the universal language of music”. “So it’s really at the heart of the musical centre in Europe, and I’m incredibly proud that we were actually invited in the first place.”
The VSO’s last international tour was in 2008, to Korea, Macau, and China, before Tausk stepped into his role in 2018. The orchestra says it’s able to fund the trip through donors including the Tuey Charitable Foundation, which provided a gift of $1 million to the European tour (as well as to the VSO and the VSO School of Music).
“It’s a big thing!” Tausk says of the logistics. “It’s not just the big group of musicians, but you have to bring the instruments—you know, it’s timpani also coming along. It’s not just a piccolo that you can actually bring in your rucksack! So it’s a big event.”
Joining the musicians of the VSO are internationally renowned violinists James Ehnes and Arabella Steinbacher as soloists.
Salzburg’s Großes Festspielhaus. Photo by Andreas Kolarik, Salzburg Festival
The repertoire varies from place to place, with pieces by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Barber. The VSO will also showcase Canadian-born composer Samy Moussa’s work, Adgilis Deda – Hymn for Orchestra.
“Samy Moussa is someone whose music has a language that speaks to many people, and it’s new music that, in a way, is very rich in sound—very authentic,” Tausk says of his choice, praising its emotional expressivity and lush orchestrations. “But it’s also music that people just really enjoy hearing—and people are very often afraid of new music. But actually, there is such great music written right now, and I think as an orchestra and as a conductor and as a programmer, as a culture presenter, actually you have to play new music. The music now will also be played in a couple of 100 years. But the only way that can happen is if you actually play the music.”
Dates for the tour are the following: April 12 at Zagreb, Croatia’s Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall; April 13 at Ljubljana, Slovenia’s Cankarjev Dom, Gallus Hall; April 15 to 17 at Salzburg, Austria’s Großes Festspielhaus; April 19 at Vaduz, Liechtenstein’s Vaduzer Saal; and April 20 at Friedrichshafen, Germany’s Graf-Zeppelin-Haus.
Tausk emphasized the importance of touring for Vancouver and Canadian orchestras at this time.
“I do think it brings so much to the orchestra’s musicians,” he begins. “It’s something to be really proud of as a city, and Vancouver can be proud of the orchestra. And so I think it also shows how important the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is—and I believe it also shows the people at home how important an orchestra is. I think an orchestra can be kind of an ambassador for a country, and for a city. It’s showing the rest of the world the culture that is in Vancouver. People know Vancouver because you can go hiking and you can go skiing and you have Whistler and you can go in your kayak and you can see whales—it’s all about the outdoors, which I personally really love. But I do think that there are these cultural diamonds that we just need to make everyone aware of.
“I mean, of course you can watch everything online, and you know, you can download every piece by every orchestra,” he adds. “But actually having the experience of the concert hall, you feel the vibrations of the instruments going through the air. You can see the musicians. You can almost smell the Vancouver air in Salzburg, right? And it’s a different experience.”
You can sense there’s also a personal amount of pride for Tausk, who hails from Europe and is enmeshed in the classical scene there as well.
“I’m inviting lots of people to come and listen,” he relates. “I’m always talking about the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and how great they are, and what a wonderful time I’m having over there. And everyone always says, ‘I’d love to come and listen, but hey, it’s a long way.’ So this is their opportunity to come and listen to the Vancouver Symphony. So for me personally, it’s a wonderful thing to share that with my friends in Europe.”
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