Yoav Talmi: 80 Years and Still Conducting and Composing

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Conductor Yoav Talmi is happy to be celebrating his 80th birthday with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec (OSQ) in May. Two concerts led by the busy maestro will feature the music of Verdi, Brahms, and the continental première of one of his original compositions. As conductor emeritus of the OSQ, Talmi’s wide array of pursuits—as a conductor, composer, and teacher—continue to play vital roles in his creative life.

A graduate of the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and the Juilliard School in New York, Talmi has enjoyed a stellar career spanning close to six decades. He has held positions as music director of the Arnhem Philharmonic in the Netherlands (1974-1980), principal guest conductor of the Munich Philharmonic (1979-80), music director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the New Israeli Opera (1984-88), music director of the San Diego Symphony (1989-96), chief conductor of the Hamburg Symphony (2000-2004) and music director of the OSQ (1998-2011). Among the orchestras he has led are famous names like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Oslo, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras.

In addition to these achievements, Talmi is the longtime head of the Orchestral Conducting department at the University of Tel Aviv’s Buchmann-Mehta School of Music.

Yoav Talmi

“I have acquired so much knowledge throughout my 55 years of conducting that I really wish to share it with a younger generation,” he says. As well as leading classes in Tel Aviv, Talmi has also given master classes around the world. “Conducting is very difficult,” he explains. “You cannot become a conductor without knowing music; it is a given—you have to study scores and know the backgrounds—but then you need to develop the talent to express yourself through the face, the body, the hands. I see it in my class, where I get students who are a pleasure to speak about music with, but when they stand and try to conduct, it just doesn’t come out. The orchestra isn’t able to play with them. Conducting is a profession—it isn’t only being a musician. You have to study.”

With that study, however, comes a certain degree of what might be termed musical absorption. “I have always, since the very beginning, memorized my scores,” Talmi says. “Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Mendelssohn—you name it, I conduct them by heart. But when it comes to my own pieces I put the score in front of me, just as a safety net.”

The range and breadth of Talmi’s work is wide indeed and includes orchestral, chamber, and a number of vocal works, including Dreams (“Halomot”) for choir a cappella (1964), De Profundis for choir and orchestra (2011), and Animi Motus for children’s (or women’s) choir and orchestra (2015). “It’s the biggest pleasure for me to write for a choir,” he says. This affinity for vocal music can be traced to his early exposure to the art form through his father, a high-school music teacher who led the school choir in which Talmi performed as a teenager. “I got to love choir singing,” he says, “so for me the greatest works that I conduct are always works with choirs. When I am given carte blanche with an orchestra and asked ‘What would you like to do?’ I program vocal works. They are at the top of my music love.”

Composing

In March 2008, Talmi led Mahler’s immense Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”) as part of celebrations for Quebec City’s 400th birthday festivities. With an orchestra of 200 musicians, a choir of 800, and an audience of 12,000, Talmi calls the experience a “peak” in his conducting career. The intense energy required for such performances, however, is what led him to dedicate more time to composing.

“When my career started, it was so demanding and I wasn’t smart and strong enough to say to orchestras: ‘I need to take now three or four months in the summer and not do conducting at all’—and I regret that in many ways,” he recalls. “Conducting took first chair, and composition became second chair for quite a few years.” On his 60th birthday, Talmi made the conscious decision to “balance the two and really give myself those months in the summer just for composition. And now I compose even more than I conduct!”

The upcoming concerts with the OSQ (on May 24 and 25 at the Grand Théâtre de Québec) will mark the North American première of Talmi’s 2019 symphony for soprano and orchestra, How She Sat Alone (based on text from the biblical Book of Lamentations) and will feature soprano Aline Kutan. Also on the program is Verdi’s overture to La forza del destino and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. In addition, Talmi is holding a series of master classes May 25-27 at the Conservatoire de musique de Québec. Concurrent to all of this is a new commission he’s working on which will mark the Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s 40th anniversary; it is set to be premièred in the 2023-2024 season.

How does maestro find the energy for so many varied pursuits? “I keep in good shape,” he says, smiling. “I walk every day, sometimes five kilometres, and I eat healthy. It’s all a part of the job. I enjoy life just as I did 20 years ago.”