Ádám Fischer

Conductor Ádám Fischer has been active with an unusually wide variety of orchestras and operatic ensembles. He has founded three major festivals, the Haydn Tage in Eisenstadt, Austria, a Gustav Mahler Festival in Kassel, Germany, and the Wagner Days at Budapest's Palace of the Arts. Fischer excels in music from Haydn to Bartók, and he is an enthusiastic conductor of opera as well as orchestral music. His recording catalog is substantial and includes many albums devoted to the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Mahler; in the 2020s, he recorded Haydn's late symphonies with the Danish Chamber Orchestra, and the last two recordings in that series appeared in 2024. Ádám Fischer (the diacriticals are often omitted in English-language contexts) was born in Budapest on September 9, 1949. Conductor Iván Fischer is his younger brother, and both sang in the Budapest National Opera Children's Choir; several other family members were or became conductors. Reputedly, Ádám was attracted to conducting as a child by a performance of Haydn's "Surprise" symphony, which allows the conductor to startle the audience. He studied composition and conducting in Budapest, then moved to Vienna for conducting studies with Hans Swarowsky. He began his operatic career as a répétiteur at the Vienna State Opera, beginning a longstanding association with that company; he was made an honorary member there in 2017 but remained active with the group. His long recording career began with a 1988 recording for CBS of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle with the Hungarian State Orchestra. Fischer held accompaniment posts in Graz, Helsinki, and Karlsruhe, scoring a breakthrough when he filled in for an ailing Karl Böhm in Munich. That led to a series of increasingly important general music director positions at opera houses in Freiburg, Kassel, and Mannheim, Germany, and, in 2007, at the Budapest Opera. He resigned from that position three years later in protest against increasing political repression in Hungary. Fischer has also made numerous guest operatic conducting appearances, leading both Italian and German operas, including a complete Wagner Ring cycle at the Bayreuth house in 2002 that brought him a Conductor of the Year nod from Germany's Opernwelt magazine. Fischer has been equally noted as a conductor of orchestral music, specializing in the Austro-German tradition from Haydn to Mahler as well as in Eastern European music. In 1987, he became conductor of the Österreichisch-Ungarische Haydn-Philharmonie; he made many Haydn recordings with the group for the Nimbus label in the 2000s decade. Fischer has been the conductor of the Danish Chamber Orchestra since 1998 and of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker since 2005. Guest conducting appearances have included those with many of the world's top orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Chicago and Boston Symphony Orchestras. Fischer has toured with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, visiting Amsterdam, London, and the U.S., as well as helping develop new productions of Verdi's Ernani and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi at La Scala in Italy. His vast discography includes complete cycles of both Haydn's symphonies and those of Mozart (with the Danish Chamber Orchestra for the Dacapo label); both of these won Germany's prestigious ECHO Klassik Award. In the 2010s, Fischer led the Danish Chamber Orchestra (previously known as the Danish National Chamber Orchestra) in a cycle of Beethoven's symphonies, released on the Naxos label, and in many Mahler performances for CAvi-music, with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker. A performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in that series appeared in 2021. In the 2020s, he revisited Haydn's late symphonies with the Danish Chamber Orchestra, offering interpretations that differed substantially from those on his earlier Haydn recordings. The last two volumes of that set appeared on the Naxos label in 2024. By that time, his recording catalog, which stretches back to the LP era, included at least 125 items. ~ James Manheim, Rovi