"Here we have probably the best recording until now in Adam Fischer’s Mahler cycle from Düsseldorf. The performance is forceful and fluid, bringing the music naturally from the dark beginning to the luminous end. The sound recording is unfortunately not too well balanced."
Pizzicato, 05-4-2018Adam Fischer on Mahler’s Fifth Symphony
What does Mahler’s Fifth mean personally to you? Unlike certain other Mahler symphonies, I have no personal story I associate with the Fifth. This
doesn’t imply that it is not just as close to me as the other ones; it is just more difficult to express the connection in words.
In 1905, Mahler recorded his own interpretation of this symphony’s first movement on a Welte-Mignon piano roll. Does such a historical document have an influence on you? Certainly. We should try to grasp Mahler’s intentions, but we should not apply them without using our own discretion. The Welte-Mignon recording is an important document to help us learn how to deal with Mahler’s tempo indications. There are those well-known indications of the length of his own orchestral performances: they show, for instance, that the Adagietto, in particular, should be played much more rapidly than we think. Incredibly fast runtimes were clocked in Saint Petersburg and also at the Concertgebouw: when we compare them with the movement runtimes as performed by famous conductors of the 1950s and 1960s, we can tell that “slow”, for Mahler, does not mean “dragging”.
Most of all – this is my fundamental conviction, and here I find it confirmed – slow and fast aren’t just metronome values. You can play faster while sounding slower, and vice-versa. It does not just have to do with maintaining a slow tempo, but with managing the accents so that it also sounds slower.
Sounding slower is more important than merely being slower. You can hear this in the Welte-Mignon recording: Mahler treats his own music in a thoroughly rhapsodic way.
At the beginning of the 2015/16 season, Adam Fischer was appointed Principal Conductor of the
Düsseldorfer Symphoniker and Artistic Consultant of the Düsseldorf Tonhalle. He is also Honorary
Conductor of the Austrian-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, founder of the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival, and
founder and director of the Wagner Festival in Budapest. Well-known for his courageous political commitment,
Adam Fischer has spoken out often in favor of human rights.
Together with András Schiff he initiated
and signed a petition against racism and discrimination, which they submitted to the European Union.
Born in 1949 in Budapest, Adam Fischer studied composition and conducting in the Hungarian
capital, and with professor Hans Swarowsky in Vienna.
After appointments as Kapellmeister in Helsinki, in Karlsruhe and at Munich State Opera, Fischer
held the post of General Music Director successively at the opera houses of Freiburg, Kassel and
Mannheim, and was also Music Director of Hungarian State Opera in Budapest. Since 1999 he has
been Chief Conductor of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra in Copenhagen.
Regular engagements have led Adam Fischer to perform in the great opera houses of Europe and the
US, including Vienna, Milan, Munich, Covent Garden, the New York Met and Bayreuth Festival. In
orchestra appearances he also conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the Munich
Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the London Philharmonic (LPO), the Orchestra of the Age
of Enlightenment, the Chicago and Boston Symphonies and the NHK Symphony in Tokyo.
Fischer’s award-winning CD releases include the complete symphonic works of Haydn (distinguished
with the German national prize “Echo Klassik”) and Mozart as well as the symphonies of Beethoven.
He has also been awarded the Grand Prix du Disque twice: for his recordings of Die Königin von
Saba (Goldmark) and of Bluebeard’s Castle (Bartók). In 2017, Adam Fischer was named Honorary
Member of Vienna State Opera.
Düsseldorfer Symphoniker
“An orchestra for Düsseldorf ”: that is the objective and the high standard that the Düsseldorfer
Symphoniker set for themselves – 250 times a year. This orchestra has an uncommon profile, since it
performs not only in the Tonhalle, but also for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and in
Duisburg. On its regular tours to Holland, Austria, China and Japan, the orchestra carries Düsseldorf ’s
reputation as a city of culture out into the world.
Already in the 1700’s, internationally celebrated artists such as Handel and Corelli collaborated on
occasion with the “Düsseldorf Court Orchestra” until the court was dissolved. A century later, in
1818, orchestral culture was re-introduced into Düsseldorf when the Municipal Music Society
(Städtischer Musikverein) was founded, attracting celebrated musicians of the likes of Mendelssohn
and Schumann to serve as conductors.
The orchestra became truly “municipal” in 1864, and after
Aachen it is thus the second oldest civic orchestra in Germany. Throughout the following decades it
became one of the leading and largest orchestras in the country. Its conductors in the postwar era have
been Heinrich Hollreiser, Eugen Szenkar, Jean Martinon, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Henryk Czyz,
Willem van Otterloo, Bernhard Klee, David Shallon, Salvador Mas Conde, John Fiore and Andrey
Boreyko.
Starting in the 2015 season, Adam Fischer has taken up the post of Principal Conductor.
The orchestra went on tour to Spain in 2011, guested at the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw in
2012, and enjoyed resounding success in Moscow that same year. In 2014, the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker
gave a superb début performance at the Musikverein in Vienna, and were likewise well-received at
the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
In May 2015 they made nine acclaimed appearances in Tokyo.
In 2017 the orchestra was invited to open the new concert hall in Arnheim, guested in Moscow and
played again at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The orchestra did various tours over the years.
“An orchestra for Düsseldorf”: that is the objective and the high standard that the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker set for themselves – 250 times a year. This orchestra has an uncommon profile, since it performs not only in the Tonhalle, but also for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and in Duisburg. On its regular tours to Holland, Austria, China and Japan, the orchestra carries Düsseldorf’s reputation as a city of culture out into the world.
Already in the 1700’s, internationally celebrated artists such as Handel and Corelli collaborated on occasion with the “Düsseldorf Court Orchestra” until the court was dissolved. A century later, in 1818, orchestral culture was re-introduced into Düsseldorf when the Municipal Music Society (Städtischer Musikverein) was founded, attracting celebrated musicians of the likes of Mendelssohn and Schumann to serve as conductors. The orchestra became truly “municipal” in 1864, and after Aachen it is thus the second oldest civic orchestra in Germany. Throughout the following decades it became one of the leading and largest orchestras in the country. Its conductors in the postwar era have been Heinrich Hollreiser, Eugen Szenkar, Jean Martinon, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Henryk Czyz, Willem van Otterloo, Bernhard Klee, David Shallon, Salvador Mas Conde, John Fiore and Andrey Boreyko. Starting in the 2015 season, Adam Fischer has taken up the post of Principal Conductor. The orchestra went on tour to Spain in 2011, guested at the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw in 2012, and enjoyed resounding success in Moscow that same year. In 2014, the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker gave a superb début performance at the Musikverein in Vienna, and were likewise well-received at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In May 2015 they made nine acclaimed appearances in Tokyo.
During his own time, Gustav Mahler was considered as one of the major conductors of Europe, but nowadays he is considered to a major composer who bridged the Late Romantic period to the modern age.
Few composers are so connected with the symphonic repertory as Gustav Mahler. Composing symphonies was his "core business": in every aspect he developed the symphony towards, and sometimes even over, its absolute limits. Almost all of Mahler's symphonies are lenghty, demand a large orchestra and are particularly great in their expressive qualities. With rustic and mythical atmospheres (the start of the First Symphony), daunting chaos (the end of his Sixth), grand visions (end of his Second), cheerful melodies (opening Fourth), romantic melancholy (the famous adagio of his Fifth), evocations of nature (his Third), megalomanic eruptions in the orchestra (his Eighth), and the clamant atonality of his unfinished Tenth, Mahler's musical palette seemed inexhaustible.
His symphonies are captivating, but some could find it a bit 'over the top' at times. For those, his orchestral songs could undoubtedly show there is an incredibly subtle and refined side to his compositional style as well.
In the Netherlands, Mahler is particularly popular due to its close bond with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, which was already established during his lifetime!
Here we have probably the best recording until now in Adam Fischer’s Mahler cycle from Düsseldorf. The performance is forceful and fluid, bringing the music naturally from the dark beginning to the luminous end. The sound recording is unfortunately not too well balanced.
Pizzicato, 05-4-2018
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