Former St. Louis Symphony conductor dies

ST. LOUIS -- Orchestra conductor Hans Vonk, who took the St. Louis Symphony to international prominence as its musical director and was a guest conductor for prestigious orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, has died Sunday at his home in Amsterdam. He was 63.

Vonk's cause of death was a rare neurological condition similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The condition caused weakness in his hands and feet and gradually spread throughout his body.

Vonk became the St. Louis Symphony's music director in 1996 and continued in that position until his declining condition forced his retirement in 2002. He was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome in 1988, but with treatment he returned to conducting a year later. In 2001 he suffered a relapse of the disease, which was later diagnosed as an unnamed neuromuscular condition.

However, friends say that Vonk's passion for conducting and interpreting music kept him going until he could no longer hold a baton. The effects of the disease showed during a February 2002 concert when he was unable to turn a page of the score and had to be helped offstage during the performance.

"He was a craftsman in every sense of the word and put everything he had into his art," said Jim Connett, a close friend of Vonk. "Having that brilliant mind trapped in a body that couldn't make music was a tragedy beyond measure."

Morris Jacob, a violist with the St. Louis Symphony, said that Vonk once told him that his greatest joy was rehearsal, where he tried to engineer solutions to problems and challenges presented by the music.

"That's what motivated him -- not the concerts, not the applause -- the music-making," Jacob said.

Vonk was born in Nazi-controlled Amsterdam on June 18, 1941. His father, a violinist with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw orchestra, died when Hans was 3. He enrolled at the University of Amsterdam to study law but continued studying music at the Amsterdam Conservatory and graduated from there in 1964.

In 1966 he completed his studies under Franco Ferrara, a teacher of many prominent conductors.

Vonk went on to gain international renown as a leading musician and conductor. He started his career at the Netherlands Ballet, where he met his future wife, ballerina Jessie Folkerts. He later served with, among others, the Concertgebouw, the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dresden State Opera and Staatskapelle, La Scala, and the Cologne Radio Symphony.

In the United States, he has appeared as a guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic and others.

His five years in Dresden began in 1985, when communists still controlled East Germany. His appointment to Europe's oldest orchestra was prestigious, but he found the regime stifling and depressing. Government managers prohibited him from talking to his musicians except at rehearsals, and then they could discuss only music.

The experience was difficult for Vonk, who has said he holds sacred his relationship with his musicians: "They are a special kind of people and I am one of them."

Perhaps that was why he once quietly sneaked into the trumpet section when the St. Louis Symphony was posing for a group photograph.

Vonk was described as a man who loved his orchestra. He once said his six seasons in St. Louis were "the happiest and most fulfilling of my career." St. Louis audiences and musicians, in return, loved him back.

Jacob and his wife, cellist Anne Fagerburg, were close friends of Vonk and his wife, Jessie. Jacob remembered him as "a wonderful guy, just a wonderful musician and conductor. One of the best."

Jacob and Fagerburg said Vonk strove for perfection on the podium but once offstage was warm and engaging with a sense of humor in the way he looked at life.

Fagerburg remembered a time when the couple came to their house for dinner, and Vonk spontaneously kissed his wife in the middle of their kitchen.

"It was a love that inspired us all," Fagerburg said.

A memorial service for Vonk will be held Thursday in Amsterdam.

Connett, who is program director of St. Louis classical radio station KFUO, said he would be playing Vonk's performances throughout the day on Thursday.