Season 2025: ANAM Orchestra with Asher Fisch

OrchestraInterview

Whilst in Perth for ANAM’s 2024 Side by Side with the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO), we caught up with their Chief Conductor Asher Fisch to chat about his 2025 visit to ANAM. You could scarcely tell he was minutes away from conducting Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand!

After conducting three Side by Side projects with ANAM musicians, 2025 will see you conduct the ANAM Orchestra for the first time. What are you looking forward to in working closer with ANAM musicians?

AF: I have been very excited to have ANAM musicians participate in WASO’s big projects. During the tight timelines of our Side by Sides, where I cannot change the way I work, I trust that WASO’s musicians will bring them on board as we do these big pieces that mean so much. So of course, the opportunity to work with ANAM musicians directly without the translation of my musicians in WASO is something that I’m excited about.

Tell us a bit more about why you've chosen Brahms for the ANAM Orchestra in 2025?

AF: To me, Brahms is foundational. At the very beginning of my tenure as Chief Conductor in Perth, I used the Brahms just to get this warm, string based, central European sound. This repertoire is very important to professional musicians and orchestras. Even if we’re playing Tchaikovsky or Dvoƙák, until you get to Stravinsky and Shostakovich, everything we play is in this world of sound you find in Brahms.

You've held positions at some of the biggest opera houses in the world and have won over Australian audiences with your Ring Cycle. Can you tell us about your career path from opera to symphonic repertoire and the influence opera has had?

AF: I came to orchestral conducting from opera, which is an old-fashioned route, and one that a lot of the great conductors of the twentieth century took. Karajan and Solti, they all started in the pit, and I think that’s where you really learn the métier of conducting. Unlike a symphonic concert, you can’t stop conducting and expect things will take care of themselves. Though I always did symphonic music, it was a graduation from opera to the concert hall, whereas a lot of the younger generation start as instrumentalists and come from the symphonic world. I see that I bring a lot of my experience in technique and of holding complicated things together. Mahler 8 doesn’t look like the end of the world after you’ve done a Ring Cycle. And in the concert hall, everyone is standing still and not moving around! And (I mean this with a bit of humour) the drama from the opera comes into my conducting, and I would say I see works in a more dramatic way. I maybe take more liberties than normal!

Opening the 2025 ANAM Orchestra program is a flute concerto by friend of ANAM and 2024 ANAM Set composer Lachlan Skipworth, which you premiered in June this year. What was it like bringing this work to life, and what role do you see conductors having in championing new Australian works and giving them life beyond their premieres?

AF: It's essential that we participate in promoting young and established Australian composers, especially in Australia, because without our support they have so few chances to get their works performed. I think we should choose a few composers that we like and not only perform one piece but make sure we go back and perform their works. That’s how it was done in the past for the great composers: they always had conductors who championed their works and conducted them at every opportunity. The biggest challenge for modern composers is getting their works done more than once. I’m so happy to have another opportunity to play Lachlan’s music with ANAM. Lachlan is a fantastic composer, and in this case it’s even more of a happy occasion because the concerto is written for one of WASO’s finest musicians, Andrew Nicholson. He’s a phenomenal flautist and I can’t imagine any other flautist playing the piece because it’s written for his abilities, technique, musicianship and musicality. Hopefully ANAM’s flautists will pick it up, learn it and play it too.

You’re conducting Anna Clyne’s This Midnight Hour with ANAM, Sydney Symphony and QSO in 2025 – Anna may be a new name for many in these audiences. Can you tell us a bit more about Anna?

AF: She’s quite new to me too – I was offered this work by Evan Kennea [Executive Manager of Artistic Planning at WASO], and by reading a few of her interviews, she’s a fascinating woman because she has such a non-traditional way of talking about music. Anna is a fantastic composer. We enjoyed doing This Midnight Hour at WASO so much that I immediately offered it to Sydney Symphony and ANAM, and you both loved the idea.

Is there a remarkable moment you would like to share, among what must be hundreds of stories from studying with Daniel Barenboim to now leading WASO?

AF: In 1991, Daniel Barenboim was going to conduct Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with soprano Barbara Hendricks and tenor Siegfried Jerusalem. Because it was just before the first Iraq War, Siegfried got cold feet. They brought in Louis Gentile and needed a pianist to play for a rehearsal with Daniel. I was at the opera, and was a young pianist who would play anything and could sight-read, so I went and did the rehearsal. Daniel liked it and we chatted, and he invited me to see rehearsals with the orchestra. A few days later I get a call from the Philharmonic – Daniel was sick and he said I was the only person who can take over. They said, ‘Asher cannot do it, he doesn’t know Das Lied von der Erde,’ they wanted me to do New World Symphony. I said: ‘No way, the orchestra doesn’t know it, it’s either the Mahler or nothing.’ Just by pure luck, because Daniel was also going to play the concerto, Rado Lupo happened to be in town and free, so he jumped in and played Mozart’s A Major piano concerto and I conducted. Through this I got the associate conductor job with Daniel at the Berlin State Opera. This was a real moment in my life that changed everything and opened all the doors, and Daniel was such a great, generous mentor.

And finally, why do you think it's important we keep the orchestra alive and vibrant for future generations?

AF: Orchestras the whole world over are fighting for survival. I see it in Europe and America, and I keep saying that I don’t think we have a reason to survive if we just keep recycling the old way of performing concerts. I think opera is in a better place because it always renews itself by presenting new productions of the old material. You always see a new take on The Barber of Seville or the Ring Cycle, but we keep doing the same Brahms symphony – so what? [I want] to redefine the concert as a form of displaying art. We’ve also become very detached from our audiences. That’s why I have a series of Discover concerts at WASO, where I talk to audiences about the music, I demonstrate things, I even let them use cell phones, and screen information about the music while we’re playing it. There’s no reason to keep the art form if we’re so detached from the audience. We have to find a way of bringing young people back to the halls, and it’s difficult, but communication and talking to audiences is important, so they know what they’re facing when they come to a concert. We have to find solutions. 


ANAM ORCHESTRA GALA CONCERT WITH ASHER FISCH

Friday 21 March 7pm

Anna CLYNE This Midnight Hour
Lachlan SKIPWORTH Flute Concerto (Victorian premiere)
Johannes BRAHMS Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 73

Asher Fisch conductor
Andrew Nicholson flute
ANAM Orchestra

Venue Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Tickets 
Standard $85/$75, Senior/Under 30 $70/$60, Concession $60/$50, Child (under 15) $20

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Asher Fisch’s Artistic Residency at ANAM is generously supported by David and Gai Taylor

Andrew Nicholson appears courtesy of West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO)

This performance will be available as a delayed broadcast on ABC Classic

 

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