The Residentie Orkest is 120 years old. Ernst Wauer, originally from Germany, lived through more than thirty years of it. Days before his 90th birthday, Wauer looks back on the "old Residentie Orkest'. "We weren't actually supposed to be 'such a cozy orchestra,' but we were."

"An ocean of sound," is how Ernst Wauer calls the viola, the instrument with which he has been fused for more than sixty years. In his downstairs apartment in The Hague, his eyes instantly begin to shine and he draws melodic lines in the air with his hands. This love for the viola led him to a decades-long career as a professional musician at the Residentie Orkest, but originated at the dinner table in East Germany, in a village near Dresden. Always when he and his parents and sisters ate dinner silently in the evening, they listened to classical music, Wauer says. "Beethoven, Schuman, Brahms, Bach: in our house they were permanent guests. As a four-year-old child, I learned that all these composers were a world unto themselves. We didn't talk much about them at home; the music was there as a natural presence. It became the nourishment of my life." That Wauer was eventually drawn to the viola was no accident, either. "My father had inherited an expensive violin from my grandfather; he would play that occasionally. He was never a professional musician, but he could do it quite well." Yet Wauer chose the viola "because it has fewer notes than the violin," he says with a roguish look. The desire to discover that "ocean of sound" that flows from a viola led Wauer to the conservatories of Dresden and Hanover.

'Van Otterloos orchestra'
In Hannover, where he worked at the orchestra, he leafed through a leaflet one day. In the back there were pages of vacancies: at the orchestra in The Hague they were looking for a viola player in the late 1960s. "'Het Re-si-den-tie Orkest': at first I couldn't pronounce it at all," says Wauer in perfect Dutch, with the occasional Germanism or distant echo of a German accent lurking through. He had never heard of 'Het Residentie Orkest', but the name of the principal conductor standing next to it did ring a lot of bells: Willem van Otterloo. "Of course we knew him, he was an international star and had released many records. I was 34 at the time, that was the time when you had to get where you wanted to be as a professional musician. Otherwise you were a bit of a loser anyway. If you could work for 'Van Otterloos orchestra', that's how we talked about it in Hanover back then, you had to go for it." Wauer had never been to "Holland" at the time, but he decided to take on the adventure. Together with his wife, who was a singer, he left for the unknown Netherlands in 1968.

No elbow work
That he would stay there for the rest of his life was his plan, but at the same time Wauer could not really have imagined at the time. Certainly not when he was first confronted with the language: his "first shock. "I traveled by train to Oldenzaal, where I waited in a waiting room at the station for the next train. Opposite me sat a man who was reading a very large newspaper, De Telegraaf. I tried to read the words along on the back, but it was illegible. To me it was like Chinese! I thought: if it falls favorably for me at Residentie Orkest , I will have to learn that later..." Last In the end, it "fell favorably" and Wauer rapidly "colloquialized," not least thanks to the fine atmosphere that prevailed at Residentie Orkest . "I was the first German in the orchestra. The war had only recently taken place then, so I was very aware of my origins and therefore tried to adapt. But the other orchestra members treated me like a mere mortal and never discriminated." There was also little competitive spirit at the Residentie Orkest. "In most similar orchestras there was group formation, cliques, people who wanted to make a career with elbow work. But there was none of that at Residentie Orkest. Someone once remarked: we shouldn't really be such a sociable orchestra. But we were. There was love, wit and empathy." And it remained that way, according to Wauer, throughout his career.

Liebenswürdige Van Otterloo
When he looks back on his more than thirty-year career - Wauer left the orchestra in 1999 - he does so along the lines of the chief conductors under whom he made music. Willem van Otterloo, the conductor for whom Wauer actually left Germany, made a big impression. "The women were at his feet, and even as a man I have to say I understood that very well: Van Otterloo was a star. He was a very attractive man and, as we say in Germany, very liebenswürdig: amiable." Under the leadership of this amiable Dutchman, an incredible harmony prevailed, according to Wauer, within the Residentie Orkest. "Van Otterloo was very convincing as a conductor. Without a score he came on and then it was like: tadaiedadajooo, tatataaaaa... He didn't have to say anything, his body language said enough. It was clear that he was possessed by the music. And that dragged us, the musicians, with him. Even on a day when it's cold, it's raining outside, your cat has run away, or you're feeling sick, you had to play and play well - and under Van Otterloo you succeeded."

Bright Frenchman
After Van Otterloo, the French conductor Jean Martinon joined the Residentie Orkest in 1974. "That was not just a little man of nothing, but a very bright Frenchman! When he slept, he still saw everything. Just like an owl. When I think of him, I can still hear him calling now: Nuance! Nuance!" With Martinon, the Residentie Orkest traveled to Chicago: for Wauer one of the highlights of his life. "You didn't just get there as a mere mortal. There were rumors that Martinon was having an affair with the boss of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, otherwise the chances of being invited were pretty slim. But whatever the reason: it was great. We played buckets full of French music under Martinon, and his body language was SO convincing, you were penetrated by that..." Wauer also has fond memories of successive conductors Ferdinand Leitner and Hans Vonk.

Mozart in Athens
When Vonk went to work for the Residentie Orkest in 1980 , he was a "typical Dutchman," says a winking Wauer. "You have to play what it says, that idea. Only Dutchmen like Rembrandt and Hals and Vermeer deviated from that attitude." Still, he could conduct inspiringly when it came to pieces by his favorite composers Bruckner, Stravinsky or César Franck - a love for these Last he also shared with Van Otterloo. "Six weeks afterward, you could still taste Bruckner on your tongue!" says Wauer. The longer he worked with the Hague musicians, the more mature Vonk became. "When you conduct a top orchestra for years, it also pulls you to a higher level as a conductor." Toward the end of his time at the Residentie Orkest, Vonk - and Wauer with him - experienced an absolute highlight at a concert in Athens. "We played in the amphitheater of the Acropolis. Vonk conducted a Mozart piano concerto and Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, one of the lesser played pieces. But he managed to enchant you so much that it was as if the sky stood still. He really turned Bruckner's piece into a monument; it was not a performance, but an interpretation! How he did that, I was really amazed."

Fascinating conductor
As Last conductor, Wauer experienced Russia's Yevgeny Svetlanov, who led the orchestra between 1992 and 1999. He combined his work in Russia with lucrative foreign contracts - so also in The Hague and with great success. Many will remember the various Mahlers, a memorable Alpensinfonie by Richard Strauss and a very beautiful Psyché by César Franck. "The way he conducted Tchaikovsky's Fifth, that was almost a dictatorship!" exclaims Wauer. Despite the fact that Svetlanov thus opened doors to unfamiliar Russian music for many Hageners, Wauer says he was not the most approachable conductor. "His Stalinist upbringing was clearly reflected in his conducting style. He exuded a kind of inner compulsion, a very fascinating person. As a musician, you were swept along by that fascination. You really did your best. You couldn't do anything else. But socially flexible, no, he wasn't, if only because he didn't speak the languages we spoke. But maybe he didn't have to. In Svetlanov's time there was talk that Residentie Orkest would have to merge, in those days it did happen with several orchestras. There were major cutbacks. But Svetlanov was able to prevent that and save the orchestra, that's how everyone felt."

Fate
From all these conductors together, Wauer says, he learned an awful lot. He compares a good conductor to a vacuum cleaner. "You have to be able to get 120 different people, who all have their own thoughts and feelings, on the same page. A good conductor has a sucking motion, he draws all those musicians to him." He was privileged that many conductors who led the Residentie Orkest mastered that "sucking motion. It was one of the reasons he stayed with the Hague Orchestra until his retirement. There was never a hair on his head that considered looking elsewhere, even in cities like Rotterdam or Amsterdam, where Wauer orchestrated several times in the "magical Concertgebouw. "The Hague Orchestra is one of the top four orchestras in the Netherlands. If you end up there, it's a fate, which determines your whole life. It felt that way even back in Hanover, when I saw that ad. I knew: this is fate calling me." Consequently, he never felt he had to make sacrifices for his work. "I was a maniac, but that's what you have to be as a professional musician. A viola demands tremendous sensitivity, in your fingers and in your heart. You have to be a sensibility-slayer. But I was and I will continue to be, even though I have since sold my viola. It is still in my heart and in my fingers."
Grete Simkuté