Eroica

Asher Fisch
Principal Conductor & Artistic Adviser

A renowned conductor in both the operatic and symphonic worlds, Asher Fisch is especially celebrated for his interpretative command of core German and Italian repertoire of the Romantic and post-Romantic era. He conducts a wide variety of repertoire from Gluck to contemporary works by living composers. Asher is now the longest serving Principal Conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO), commencing his tenure in 2014. His former posts include Principal Guest Conductor of the Seattle Opera (2007- 2013), Music Director of the New Israeli Opera (1998-2008), and Music Director of the Wiener Volksoper (1995-2000).

Born in Israel, Asher began his conducting career as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant and Kappellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper. He has built his versatile repertoire at the major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and Semperoper Dresden. Fisch has conducted at leading American symphony orchestras including those of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia. In Europe he has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France, among others.

In addition to his concerts with WASO, Asher’s 2024 season includes Aribert Reimann’s Lear at the Teatro Real de Madrid, Carmen at the Wiener Staatsoper, and Dialogues des Carmélites at the Israeli Opera. Guest engagements with orchestras include a return to the Queensland Symphony in Brisbane. His recent seasons featured Lohengrin and La forza del destino at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and concerts with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Queensland Symphony, Sydney Symphony, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Asher’s award-winning recordings include Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and tenor Stuart Skelton’s first solo album “Shining Knight” - all recorded with WASO - and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with the Munich Radio Orchestra. In 2016, the complete Brahms symphonies with Asher Fisch and WASO were released on ABC Classic to great acclaim. His recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle with the Seattle Opera was released in 2014. His first Ring Cycle recording, with the State Opera of South Australia, won ten Helpmann Awards, including best opera and best music direction. Asher Fisch is an accomplished pianist and has released a solo recording of Wagner piano transcriptions for the Melba label.

Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.

Francesca Dego
Violin

Italian-American violinist Francesca Dego is celebrated for her versatility, compelling interpretations, and flawless technique.

Her 2023/24 season includes concerto debuts with Utah Symphony, Swedish Radio, Bergen Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and re-invitations to the Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), Royal Philharmonic, Orchestra Haydn, and Brucknerhaus Linz. She is Artist in Focus at the Ulster Orchestra, which includes concerto engagements across the season, including the Brahms Double Concerto with Daniel Müller-Schott.

Highlights of recent seasons include concerts with NHK across Japan, Washington National Symphony, Indianapolis, Orquesta de Castilla y León, and Orchestre de Champs Elysées. In Spring she made her Canadian debut with National Arts Centre Ottawa, and other recent projects include Bernstein’s Serenade at La Fenice, and others with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, BBC Symphony, Ulster Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra and La Verdi, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic and Royal Scottish National Orchestras, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Tokyo Metropolitan and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, Teatro Carlo Felice Genova at St Petersburg’s renowned Stars of the White Nights festival, Teatro Regio di Torino, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and all the major Italian orchestras, Orquestra de Sevilla and de la Comunitat Valenciana at Palau de les Arts, Auckland Philharmonia, Oviedo Philharmonic, Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Het Gelders Orkest, and the Orkest van het Oosten

Francesca regularly collaborates with esteemed conductors such as Sir Roger Norrington, Fabio Luisi, Philippe Herreweghe, Daniele Rustioni, Lionel Bringuier, Dalia Stasevska, Markus Stenz, Jonathan Heyward, Donato Renzetti, Gemma New, Jader Bignamini, Alpesh Chauhan, Asher Fisch, Markus Poschner, Krzysztof Urbański, and Xian Zhang. Francesca is signed exclusively to Chandos Records and her releases of the complete Mozart violin concerti conducted by Sir Roger Norrington with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra were received to unanimous critical acclaim. Her most recent release on the label features the Mozart piano quartets with Federico Colli, Timothy Ridout, and Laura van der Heijden. She has also recorded concertos by Paganini and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari alongside the CBSO and Daniele Rustioni, the recital disc Il Cannone, as well as the violin sonatas by Beethoven and Paganini’s Caprices, for Deutsche Grammophon.

A keen chamber musician, Francesca enjoys performing with artists such as Francesco Piemontesi, Daniel Müller-Schott, Timothy Ridout, Jan Lisiecki, Salvatore Accardo, Alessandro Carbonare, Mahan Esfahani, Bruno Giuranna, Shlomo Mintz, Narek Hakhnazaryan, Federico Colli, Mischa Maisky, Antonio Meneses, Martin Owen, Alessandro Taverna, Enrico Dindo, Alessio Bax, Roman Simovic, and Francesca Leonardi. Francesca is based in London and plays a rare Francesco Ruggeri violin (Cremona 1697).

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)

Coriolan – Overture, Op.62

After several attempts at writing his own opera (of which only one, the eventual Fidelio, was successful), Beethoven channelled his composing for the theatre into incidental music for the plays of others – above all the overtures to Coriolan (1807) and Egmont (1810). Both plays deal with political or human issues which readily captured the imagination of the passionate and committed composer in this middle period of his creative life. Both overtures, without attempting to trace the action of the dramas, seize immediately upon the vital principles of conflict and sum them up in dramatic tone poems that are self-sufficient musical entities.

Beethoven composed the Coriolan Overture for a drama by Heinrich Collin, a contemporary poet doubtless familiar with Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, which was written on very similar lines. Powerful chords in the introduction reflect the iron determination of the hero in his resolve to reconquer and restore peace to the Rome that has banished him, and his stern rejection of embassies from the city which he now holds under siege. Subsequent vacillating figures reveal the self-doubt that tortures him at the thought of the famine-stricken Roman people and the pleadings of his family. The conflict in his mind is worked out in a powerful development which leads to gradual disintegration and a swift final collapse at the recognition that only the sacrifice of his own life will bring peace without loss of honour.

© Anthony Cane

First performance:
March 1807, Vienna.

First WASO performance:
28-29 June 2013. Rory Macdonald, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
8 February 1998. Marco Zuccarini, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.

Dmitri Shostakovich
(1906-1975)

Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op.99

Nocturne (Moderato)
Scherzo (Allegro)
Passacaglia (Andante) -
Cadenza -
Burlesque (Allegro con brio – Presto)

Paradoxically, the Second World War lulled some Soviet artists into a false sense of security. They, like the rest of the populace, endured the privations and dangers of battle and invasion, but the war provided some relief from the Great Terror of the 1930s during which Stalin had ‘purged’ - murdered or imprisoned - countless numbers of his own citizens, especially the leading intellects in various fields. That Shostakovich, for one, had let his guard down is evident in the events surrounding his Ninth Symphony, for which Stalin had ‘suggested’ the composer use Beethoven’s Ninth as a model. Shostakovich, unable to write the victory symphony expected, nonetheless felt safe enough to produce an ostensibly ‘light’ Ninth Symphony in 1945.

With the defeat of the Nazis, Stalin’s administration returned to the business of enforcing its values on the Soviet people, and his cultural commissar Andrei Zhdanov initiated a series of crackdowns on artistic life. By February 1948 a Party Decree had been promulgated which attacked the proponents of ‘formalism’
in music. Shostakovich, despite publicly acknowledging his ‘errors’, was relieved of his teaching duties. Richard Taruskin has pointed out that a first draft of the Party Decree included the resolution ‘to liquidate the one-sided, abnormal deviation in Soviet music towards textless instrumental works.’ In the event, ‘liquidate’ was replaced with ‘censure’, but the intention is plain: textless works are susceptible to many interpretations, and therefore less easy to censor. Perhaps for that reason, Shostakovich kept the violin concerto that he began in 1947 under wraps for some years - it only saw the light of day in 1955 when Stalin was safely embalmed.

The impetus for the work was almost certainly the series of concerts given by David Oistrakh in 1947 entitled ‘The Development of the Violin’, and Shostakovich’s response to Oistrakh’s amazing artistry was to compose this big, four-movement, essentially symphonic work and dedicate it to him. It was initially given the opus number 77 but when published appeared as Op.99. Oistrakh himself made many illuminating remarks about the work, saying:

“This composition sets before the violinist a fascinating and noble task…enabling him not only to display his virtuosity, but, in the first place, to give utterance to the most profound feelings, ideas and emotions.

The concerto is not readily grasped by the violinist. I recall that a clear perception of it came to me slowly and not without difficulty. I became more and more interested in the work as the days went by, until finally I found myself wholly under the spell of the music.”

The music weaves that spell gradually on its audience. The opening Nocturne - and how seemingly perverse to begin a bravura work with a nocturne! - is neither symphonic sonata-allegro nor virtuosic display. Rather the soloist is presented as a lyrical, meditative character, tentatively exploring a sombre landscape and rising by degrees to more impassioned, double-stopped gestures before retreating slowly. Oistrakh described the movement’s ‘suppression of feelings’ and air of ‘tragedy in the best sense of purification’. The comparison with the following Scherzo - one of Shostakovich’s more mordant jokes - could hardly be greater. Here the music is, in Oistrakh’s words, ‘malignant, demonic, prickly’. The solo part, often playing in counterpoint with solo woodwinds, requires all the virtuosity apparently lacking in the first movement. The movement reaches a grim climax with the bone-rattling timbre of the xylophone.

While there is some gallows-humour in the Scherzo (and references to the DSCH motive [D-E flat-C-B natural] which Shostakovich uses as his musical signature), the Passacaglia is unapologetically baleful. Its theme, hinted at in the Scherzo but fully stated here by low strings and timpani, has an ominous tread to which the violin replies with long, heart-rending melodies - again called upon to play double-stopped sections at moments of high drama. Like the Nocturne, the Passacaglia emphasises the melodic, rather than the bravura, aspects of the solo instrument, but as the movement dissolves into the concerto’s cadenza, there can be no doubt that this is music conceived for a prodigiously talented performer. The cadenza requires the full gamut of the soloist’s technical armoury, and leads without a break into the finale Burlesque.

It is only here, where the orchestra (again rendered brittle by the xylophone) plays the introductory bars without the soloist, that we realise how constant a presence the violin has been until now, and what stamina is required to play a work of such dimensions. But there’s more, and it’s not long before the violin is drawn back into the maelstrom, responding with astounding agility to a movement of classic Shostakovich. There is black humour, and acid energy, and ever more impossible-seeming gestures for the soloist before a brief reminiscence of the Passacaglia is peremptorily dismissed by a sudden cadence.

Oistrakh gave the first performance in Leningrad in 1955 and a few months later introduced it to the West in a concert at Carnegie Hall. The US press went wild; Stalin would have turned in his mausoleum.

Gordon Kerry © 2002

Frist performance:
29 October 1955. Yevgeny Mravinsky, conductor. David Oistrakh, violin.

First WASO performance:
13-14 March 1970. Thomas Mayer, conductor. Nelli Shkolnikova, violin.

Most recent WASO performance:
5-6 June 2009. Vladimir Verbitsky, conductor. Sasha Rozhdestvensky, violin.

Instrumentation:
three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, one English horn, three clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), two bassons, contrabassoon, four horns, timpani, percussions, celesta, two harps and trings.

Som Howie
Associate Principal Clarinet

Do you remember the first orchestral work you heard (live or recording)?

Shortly after I started learning how to play the clarinet, my dad bought a CD of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, so that was one of the times I can remember listening to the sound of an orchestra. But when I was really young, Dad would play vinyl recordings of Shostakovich and Rachmaninov which I apparently used to dance to - though I can’t remember that!

What made you want to learn to play the clarinet?

I actually wanted to play the trumpet but my primary school band program didn’t have any trumpets left. My dad, who works at the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, was approached by the head of woodwind at the time, Mark Walton. Mark, who lived close to us, wanted to make a video of how to teach beginner clarinet and send the video to rural communities in NSW that didn’t have access to teachers. He asked if I was interested in being the guinea pig clarinet student for this project and I thought, ‘Why not’! After my first lesson with Mark, I was absolutely hooked.

How do you typically prepare for a concert?

Usually, on the day of a concert, I don’t play too much. I tend to either listen to recordings of the repertoire and do some mental practice with my part or double-check any important bits with the score. I think overall for me it’s about getting into the right headspace before the concert.

When no one’s watching, what music do you listen to?

I listen to all sorts of stuff. To be honest it usually just depends on what mood I’m in, I don’t think I have any one favourite genre. Some days it’s Daft Punk, and the next day could be The Beatles.

If I wasn’t a musician, I would be a…

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