Ring Cycle

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.

Andrew Nicholson
Flute

Andrew joined WASO in 2010.

Andrew studied at Chetham’s School of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Since the age of twenty-two, Andrew has held Principal Flute positions with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under David Atherton, the Hallé Orchestra under Kent Negano and Sir Mark Elder, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Daniele Gatti and Charles Dutoit, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Thierry Fischer and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, under Paul Daniel and Asher Fisch.

He has regularly appeared as guest principal flautist with the LSO, the LPO, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham, Malaysia Philharmonic, China Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, London Chamber, Guangzhou Symphony, Auckland Symphony, Athens Camerata, Royal Scottish National, Scottish Chamber, English Chamber, Hebrides Ensemble, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian World Orchestra.

Andrew gives masterclasses at WAAPA and UWA, and has given master-classes in London (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Academy and Royal Colleges of Music), Manchester (RNCM, Chetham’s), Belgium, Poland, New York, Melbourne’s Australian National Academy of Music, Hong Kong, Brisbane and Sydney. Andrew has coached the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, the National Youth Orchestra of Wales and the Australian Youth Orchestra.

Andrew plays on a Louis Lot flute from the 1870’s.

Gioachino Rossini
(1792-1868)

La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie):
Overture

Rossini’s semi-serious opera, The Thieving Magpie, was first produced at La Scala, Milan, in 1817. The libretto, an adaptation by del Testa of a French play of the same name by Charles Caigniez and Jean Marie Baudouin, is the story of a servant girl who is condemned to death on circumstantial evidence for stealing a silver spoon. As she is being taken to the scaffold, someone in the crowd catches sight of a magpie overhead making off with a silver spoon in its beak. The girl is released amid great jubilation.

The opera, which was immensely successful, represented in some respects a new departure for the composer. Rossini, two of whose works had previously failed in Milan, made a point of settling in that city two months before the new piece was produced, to study at first hand the taste of the Milanese. This public, which prided itself on its intellectual superiority, had developed a strong liking for German opera, with its emphasis on orchestral values. The composer accordingly resolved to elaborate his instrumentation beyond his usual custom.

Stendhal remarked that the premiere was the most successful first night he had ever attended and told of listeners growing so excited after the overture that, contrary to habit, ‘everybody began talking to a neighbour.’ The opera became the most popular feature of La Scala’s repertoire throughout the season. ‘Owing to the variety of its moods,’ says Francis Toye, ‘it could scarcely fail to please in one respect or another. There was something for everyone: pathos, tragedy, tenderness and gaiety. Things of startling originality were presented in a manner that everybody could follow and understand.’

The overture, widely considered Rossini’s best (after William Tell), opens with loud rolls on two snare drums, which are heard frequently in the course of the piece. After the drum rolls, the overture launches into a swinging march tune. The chief theme of the overture is taken from a duet in the third act of the work. The rest of the melodic material is typical of the composer in character. There are striking examples of the ‘Rossini crescendo’, particularly as the pace of the music quickens in a brief coda for a thrilling curtain raiser.

© Symphony Australia

First performance:
31 May 1817, Milan.

First WASO performance:
19 February 1949. Henry Krips, conductor.

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

Instrumentation:
piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle and strings.

Lachlan Skipworth
(b. 1982)

Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (2024)

I: Misterioso - Poco allegro - Lento - Agitato - Poco allegro
II: Larghetto espressivo
III: Misterioso - Tranquillo
IV: Molto allegro - Presto subito

Composer’s notes
I knew I would enjoy composing a flute concerto.

Indeed, flutes abound in all my orchestral works and I have even written a sonata for tonight’s soloist and dedicatee Andrew Nicholson. But I also knew I wanted to avoid the textures of impressionism - definitely no Pan, fauns or mythological beasts this time; here I sought melodic immediacy and rhythmic drive, perhaps reflecting the Mozart, Weber, Copland clarinet concerti I learnt in my student days.

Don’t be fooled then, by the mysterious flute-laden introduction. It’s just a momentary ruse; the music soon urges and spirals up to a whirring tutti. The main theme arrives in the solo flute, its plaintive character singing with the melodic quality I was seeking. And the rhythmic energy is born in the flute’s ornamental flashes which soon overflow into the accompaniment. Such music calls for clarity and lightness, so I kept the orchestra itself quite small: notice the reduced strings, winds and brass, and a preference for mallet percussion over timpani or other large drums. Most important is the positioning of the piano right in the centre of the orchestra, so its clear attack accentuates the very front of the beat.

So with my sonic vision established, I let the music pour out and soon found I had four movements rather than the standard three. Much of their material I coaxed from a three-note melodic cell made from a falling step followed by a rising leap. Simple, innocuous even, and its shape echoes throughout the piece - forwards, backwards, upside-down, and skewed to the edges of recognition. Hear it in the first movement’s theme and vibrant outbursts, in the melodic contour of the Larghetto Espressivo second, and later in the third’s ethereal Misterioso. And it’s still there, squashed, in the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants fourth movement.

But by this stage, I suspect my compositional twists and turns will have been forgotten, because it’s a concerto, after all, and I definitely didn’t hold back on writing a virtuosic solo part. While I hope the music itself lingers as we leave the hall, I know we’ll likely all be swept up in the dazzling flute work as the concerto builds to its finale.

I knew I would enjoy composing a flute concerto.

Lachlan Skipworth © 2024

Commissioned for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra by Geoff Stearn.

World premiere performances:
21-22 June 2024, Perth Concert Hall. Asher Fisch conductor, Andrew Nicholson flute.

First WASO performance:
These are the first performances by WASO.

Instrumentation:
two flutes (second doubles piccolo and alto flute), two Clarinets (second doubles bass clarinet); two horns, two trumpets, two trombones; two percussion, piano, harp and strings.

Richard Wagner
(1813-1883)

The Ring of the Nibelung (Excerpts)

1. Das Rheingold: Entry of the Gods into Valhalla
2. Siegfried: Forest Murmurs
3. Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s Rhine Journey
4. Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s funeral music
5. Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries

Last year, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra under Asher Fisch presented Act I of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre. That concert began with excerpts from operas by the Italian, Verdi, the other giant of 19th century opera, also born 1813.

This concert begins with Italian music too, the overture to Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie, premiered in Milan in 1817. As a kapellmeister in the 1830s, Wagner actually conducted Rossini operas, but he wrote scathingly of Rossini’s work in his theoretical text, Oper und Drama (1851). He felt that Rossinian opera promoted shallow vocal display to entertain a frivolous public.

Wagner sought something deeper: a type of opera which he called Music Drama in which the music would amplify the dramatic import of a tale designed to awaken an audience’s deepest feelings.

With works such as The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin behind him Wagner turned to an idea he had long thought about, an opera on the German mythic hero, Siegfried. This idea turned into the Ring cycle, comprising Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung.

Though the entire Ring was eventually premiered as a complete cycle at Wagner’s specially built indoor amphitheatre in Bayreuth in 1876, Wagner’s research had begun in the 1840s when he conceived the idea for an opera on the subject of Siegfried’s murder at the hands of the Gibichung clan. At first, he thought he would base his opera on the 12th-century Burgundian epic, the Nibelungenlied (basically an account of the hunting-down of Siegfried’s killers). But in the end Wagner’s opera swelled in the other direction, telling of events that led up to Siegfried’s death. For this, Wagner reached into Nordic mythology to come up with a story of how Wotan the god-king created a situation where humans had to be conceived to extricate the corrupted gods from destructive behaviour he had indulged in when building a temple to his own vanity, Valhalla. In the process of creating ‘prequels’, Wagner changed the significance of Siegfried’s death into a means by which Brünnhilde, his wife, restored balance to the world.

Wagner’s Ring can be conceived as broad allegory. An environmental reading might interpret its opening (the unfurling of an E flat chord) as symbolising ‘un-corrupted’ nature. The Ring is a long way from entertainment.

Specific reforms espoused by Wagner in texts such as Oper und Drama included alliterative texts that would better impinge on the listener’s consciousness; musical modulations that followed the beats of the text; motifs identified with characters, themes or concepts whose transformation would plot dramatic progress and at the same time integrate the music; and an increased commentating role for a very large orchestra.

In general terms, Wagner’s Ring tells how a source of world-power – the gold that had lain forever on the bed of the Rhine – was stolen by the dwarf-king Alberich when he was denied love. Alberich focused much of that power in a ring which Wotan stole when looking for payment for the god-citadel. But Alberich cursed the ring so that whoever wore it was doomed. So began a quest to retrieve the ring for its power with the curse undoing everybody who possessed it until Brünnhilde allowed herself to die so that the ring could be returned to the Rhine. Was Wagner trying to say something to the German volk about the source and course of world history? The art-forms of his time – contemporary forms of opera - were inadequate to his purposes.

No wonder he came up with the Gesamtkunstwerk, bringing to the project everything he had learnt about music and theatre to that time, plus lessons from Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. No wonder he revolutionised theatre architecture, using money from King Ludwig II of Bavaria to construct a theatre for The Ring where everybody in the audience had a sightline and could focus on the stage because the orchestra was sunk beneath it.

Tonight’s extracts form teasers for the 15 hours that is the complete Ring. Played continuously they might form a kind of five-movement Ring Symphony. Individually, they provide insight into Wagner’s illustrative powers.

The ‘Entry of the Gods into Valhalla’ is a bold opening. In Das Rheingold, the giants Fasolt and Fafner have finished building Valhalla and taken Freia the goddess of youth as payment. Wotan must get her back but in doing so swaps Freia for gold and the ring (made from that gold) stolen from the bed of the Rhine. Just listening to it, the ‘Entry of the Gods’ sounds like pure victory. Story-wise, it’s ironic: the ring is cursed; Wotan has set in motion a train of destruction.

He must try to regain godly power, but needs a species not compromised by his own criminality to achieve this, so he fathers humans. Two generations down, enter Siegfried, the child of an incestuous union between Siegmund and Sieglinde. But Siegfried has been brought up by a dwarf, Mime. And in the forest he contemplates his origins before meeting a woodbird who will give him the clue to the rest of his adventures. ‘Forest Murmurs’ is a reminder, after the bombastic ‘Entry of the Gods’, that Wagner could create music of great tenderness.

After killing Fafner who had changed himself into a dragon to hoard the Rhinegold and ring, Siegfried tastes dragon blood and develops the capacity to understand birdsong. The woodbird leads Siegfried to the valkyrie Brünnhilde, asleep on a fire-ringed rock, having been turned mortal by her father, Wotan. After a night of love (in passionate music often described as “Dawn”), Siegfried gives Brünnhilde the ring most recently possessed by Fafner, and sets forth down the Rhine. A vivid scherzo portrays Siegfried’s journey, complete with billowing wave-like themes and brightening touches of glockenspiel and triangle. Siegfried arrives at the home of the Gibichungs who trick him into retrieving the ring from Brünnhilde and then murder him so they can get hold of it for themselves. Siegfried’s ‘Sword motif’ blazing out amid the darkness of the funeral march is among Ring motifs passing in review here.

To end Götterdämmerung, Wagner engineers events so that Brünnhilde, once again possessor of the ring, rides into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, from which the Rhinemaidens will retrieve what had once, in pure form, lain on the bed of the Rhine. Asher Fisch ends this digest with ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. This allegro works narratively as well as symphonically, since valkyries in German mythology took fallen heroes back to Valhalla riding horses through the air. Siegfried ends this concert dead, but transported. And we get a sense of how richly Wagner enhanced music in the quest to make it serve the drama.

Gordon K. Williams, © 2017/2024

First performance:
The Ring of the Nibelung (whole cycle), August 1876, Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Most recent WASO performance:
6 September 2017. Asher Fisch, conductor.

Instrumentation:
piccollo, three flutes, three oboes, cor anglais, three clarinets, bass clarinet and three bassoons; four horns, four wagner tubas, three trumpets, bass trumpet, four trombones and tuba; two timpani, three percussion and two harps; strings.