Iván Fischer

con­duc­tor, Music Direc­tor

Con­duc­tor, com­pos­er, opera direc­tor, thinker and edu­ca­tor, anchored in the tra­di­tion of the great musi­cal poly­maths, Iván Fis­ch­er is con­sid­ered one of the most vision­ary musi­cians of our time.

His focus is always the music, and to this end, he has devel­oped sev­er­al new con­cert for­mats and reformed the struc­ture and work­ing method of the sym­pho­ny orches­tra. In the mid-1980s he found­ed the Budapest Fes­ti­val Orches­tra, where he has since intro­duced and estab­lished numer­ous inno­va­tions. He envi­sions a pool of musi­cians serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty in var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions and musi­cal styles.

His work as Music Direc­tor of the Budapest Fes­ti­val Orches­tra has devel­oped into one of the great­est musi­cal suc­cess sto­ries of the last 30 years. With inter­na­tion­al tours and a series of record­ings for Philips Clas­sics and Chan­nel Clas­sics, he has earned a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the world’s most cel­e­brat­ed orches­tral con­duc­tors, for whom tra­di­tion and inno­va­tion go hand in hand.

He has found­ed a num­ber of fes­ti­vals, includ­ing the Budapest Mahler­fest, the Bridg­ing Europe fes­ti­val and the Vicen­za Opera Fes­ti­val. The World Eco­nom­ic Forum pre­sent­ed him with the Crys­tal Award for his achieve­ments in fos­ter­ing inter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al rela­tions.

He was prin­ci­pal con­duc­tor of the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra in Wash­ing­ton, the Opéra Nation­al de Lyon and the Konz­erthau­sor­ch­ester Berlin, the lat­ter appoint­ing him Con­duc­tor Lau­re­ate. The Roy­al Con­cert­ge­bouw Orches­tra named him Hon­orary Guest Con­duc­tor fol­low­ing many decades of work­ing togeth­er. He is a fre­quent guest con­duc­tor of the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic, the Bavar­i­an Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and New York Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra.

Iván Fis­ch­er stud­ied the piano, vio­lin and cel­lo in Budapest, before join­ing the leg­endary con­duct­ing class of Hans Swarowsky in Vien­na. Hav­ing spent two years as assis­tant to Niko­laus Harnon­court, he then launched his inter­na­tion­al career as win­ner of the Rupert Foun­da­tion con­duct­ing com­pe­ti­tion in Lon­don.

After var­i­ous guest appear­ances at inter­na­tion­al opera hous­es, he found­ed the Ivan Fis­ch­er Opera Com­pa­ny. His stag­ing always sets as its goal an organ­ic uni­ty between music and the­atre. IFOC pro­duc­tions, which often spa­tial­ly con­nect the instru­men­tal­ists and singers, have been received with great acclaim in recent years in New York, Edin­burgh, Abu Dhabi, Berlin, Gene­va and Budapest.

Iván Fis­ch­er has been active as a com­pos­er since 2004, writ­ing most­ly vocal music with instru­men­tal ensem­bles. His opera The Red Heifer made head­lines across the world; the children’s opera The Gruffa­lo enjoyed numer­ous revivals in Berlin; his most fre­quent­ly per­formed work, “Eine Deutsch-Jid­dis­che Kan­tate” has been per­formed and record­ed in sev­er­al coun­tries.

Iván Fis­ch­er is founder of the Hun­gar­i­an Mahler Soci­ety and patron of the British Kodá­ly Acad­e­my. The pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Hun­gary award­ed him the Gold Medal, and the French gov­ern­ment hon­ored him as Cheva­lier des Arts et des Let­tres. In 2006 he was dec­o­rat­ed with the Hun­gar­i­an Kos­suth Prize, in 2011 with the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic Soci­ety Music Award and the Dutch Ovatie Prize, and in 2013 he was named an hon­orary mem­ber of the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Music in Lon­don.
Iván Fis­ch­er is hon­orary cit­i­zen of Budapest.

Guy Braunstein

Vio­line

“I always remain who I am. Only the music decides my mean­ing.” (Guy Braun­stein)

A unique blend of vir­tu­os­i­ty, restraint and cre­ativ­i­ty – this is what vio­lin­ist, con­duc­tor and com­pos­er Guy Braun­stein stands for. Like few oth­ers, he not only knows how to con­vince audi­ences with his music, but also how to chal­lenge them: Whether with demand­ing pro­grammes, sophis­ti­cat­ed inter­pre­ta­tions or his own works and arrange­ments – Guy Braun­stein aims to sur­prise and rein­vent. And although he can eas­i­ly be cat­e­gorised in the “tra­di­tion of the great Jew­ish vio­lin­ists such as Mis­cha Elman and Isaac Stern” (Tele­graph), for him music lives not only from its own his­to­ry, but through per­pet­u­al renew­al, updat­ing and unex­pect­ed twists and turns.

Whether as a cel­e­brat­ed soloist who mas­ters the stan­dard reper­toire from Bach to Shostakovich with ease, or as a con­ge­nial cham­ber music part­ner in a wide vari­ety of for­ma­tions: Guy Braun­stein is a guest at the world’s most impor­tant music cen­tres and fes­ti­vals. He has per­formed with renowned orches­tras such as the Ton­halle Orches­tra Zurich, the Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, the Phil­har­mo­nia Orches­tra Lon­don and the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic. His musi­cal part­ners include András Schiff, Zubin Mehta, Mau­r­izio Polli­ni, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Yefim Bronf­man, Daniel Baren­boim, Simon Rat­tle, Martha Arg­erich, Mit­suko Uchi­da, Christoph von Dohnányi, Lang Lang, Emmanuel Ax, Andris Nel­sons and Semy­on Bychkov. Guy Braun­stein is also present on the inter­na­tion­al con­cert stage as a con­duc­tor: he was Con­duc­tor and Artist in Res­i­dence with the Ham­burg Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and the Trond­heim Sym­fo­niorkester and works with orches­tras such as the Helsin­ki, Rot­ter­dam and Israel Phil­har­mon­ic as well as the Queens­land Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

High­lights of the 2023/24 sea­son include con­certs with the Boston Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, the Budapest Fes­ti­val Orches­tra, the Hels­ing­borg Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, the Prague Cham­ber Soloists and the Copen­hagen Phil, in which Guy Braun­stein will appear as soloist and con­duc­tor. The pro­grammes include his own works such as “Die Nacht wird immer verklärter” and the Rusal­ka Rhap­sody as well as the vio­lin con­cer­tos by Elgar, Delius and Haydn.

Guy Braun­stein’s great­est and iden­ti­ty-form­ing pas­sion is arrang­ing and com­pos­ing: In the roman­tic tra­di­tion of Pagani­ni and Liszt, he bril­liant­ly tran­scribes musi­cal mas­ter­pieces for his own or oth­er instru­ments and instru­men­ta­tions and presents operas, cham­ber music or even songs in a com­plete­ly new form. In addi­tion to
excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene One­gin” and “Swan Lake”, he has also arranged Puc­ci­ni arias and Dvořák’s opera “Rusal­ka”.
In 2023, “Die Nacht wird immer verklärter”, an arrange­ment of Schönberg’s string sex­tet “Verklärte Nacht”, cel­e­brat­ed its pre­miere with the Rund­funk-Sin­fonieorch­ester Berlin. The vio­lin­ist is par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of the Bea­t­les’ songs: in addi­tion to Six Vari­a­tions on “Black­bird” and the arrange­ments of “A hard day’s night” and “Some­thing”, Guy Braun­stein also wrote “Abbey Road Con­cer­to”, a high­ly vir­tu­oso ver­sion of the Bea­t­les’ album “Abbey Road” for solo vio­lin and orches­tra.

In 2024, Guy Braun­stein will release his own as well as Delius’ Vio­lin Con­cer­to and Vaugh­an-Williams’ “The Lark Ascend­ing” on Alpha Records in a record­ing with Alon­dra de la Par­ra and Orchestre Phil­har­monique Roy­al de Liège. His 2019 albums “Tchaikovsky Trea­sures” with Tchaikovsky’s Vio­lin Con­cer­to and his own arrange­ments, “Old Souls” with arrange­ments of cham­ber music works by Dvořák, Beethoven, Wolf and Kreisler and “Music of my Heart” (2012) with works by Bloch, Chaus­son, Brahms, Corel­li and oth­ers were praised by the inter­na­tion­al press, as well as his record­ing of Bruch’s Vio­lin Con­cer­to and the “Scot­tish Fan­ta­sy”, record­ed with the Bam­berg Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra under the direc­tion of Ion Marin.

Guy Braun­stein grew up in Tel Aviv and began play­ing the vio­lin at the age of sev­en. He stud­ied with Chaim Taub and lat­er in New York with Glenn Dicterow and Pin­chas Zuck­er­man and his men­tor Isaac Stern. His col­lab­o­ra­tion with Clau­dio Abba­do in par­tic­u­lar is one of Guy Braun­stein’s most impor­tant influ­ences. In 2000, he became the youngest vio­lin­ist in the orches­tra’s his­to­ry to take over the posi­tion of con­cert­mas­ter of the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic and helped shape the orches­tra for over a decade. He was Artis­tic Direc­tor of the Roland­seck Fes­ti­val and the clas­clas Fes­ti­val in Gali­cia.

Guy Braun­stein plays a vio­lin made by Francesco Rug­gieri in 1679.