Ivan Fischer is the Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. He has been Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra since he founded the celebrated ensemble in 1983.
Education:
Maestro Fischer studied piano, violin, cello, and composition in Budapest, continuing his education in Vienna, where he was in Hans Swarowsky's conducting class. Mr. Fischer also studied cello and early music while he was Nikolaus Harnoncourt's assistant. His international career was launched when he won the Rupert Foundation Conducting Competition in 1976, at the age of 25.
Background:
Born in Budapest in 1951, he first achieved public acclaim outside his native land, but returned to participate in the cultural renaissance that began in Hungary in the 1980s and caught fire with the fall of the Iron Curtain.
A frequent guest of major orchestras, Mr. Fischer made his U.S. debut conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1983. He has led the orchestras of Berlin, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Paris, Munich, Dresden, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. He has conducted Mozart at the Glyndebourne Festival and in concert at the BBC Proms with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, of which he was named a principal artist along with Simon Rattle and Vladimir Jurowski (the OAE having no principal conductor).
Ivan Fischer, nominated for Gramophone's 2008 Artist of the Year award, has a wide-ranging discography, now recording with the Budapest Festival Orchestra exclusively for Channel Classics. Their most recent release is the Beethoven Symphony No. 7, and they have also recorded three Mahler symphonies: the Second-which earned a 2007 Editor's Choice Gramophone award-the Sixth, and the Fourth, to be released this season. Other recordings have been similarly praised and recognized, including Richard Strauss' Josefs Legende, Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. The Fischer/BFO Bartok recordings on Philips Classics, especially The Miraculous Mandarin, have won multiple prizes. Channel has also released an all-Dvorak disc, and Mr. Fischer's Glyndebourne DVD of Mozart's Così fan tutte was nominated for a Gramophone award.
Mr. Fischer has led Mozart productions at the Vienna State Opera and has also conducted the major opera companies of Brussels, Budapest, Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Zurich. He was music director of the Opera National de Lyon from 2000 to 2003.
