Beethoven's Fifth

Asher Fisch
Principal Conductor & Artistic Adviser

Asher Fisch is a renowned conductor celebrated for his interpretative mastery of the core German and Italian repertoire of the Romantic and post-Romantic eras. Equally accomplished in both the operatic and symphonic realms, his repertoire spans from Haydn to contemporary works by living composers. Since 2014, he has been the Principal Conductor & Artistic Adviser of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO), making him the Orchestra’s longest-serving Principal Conductor. His previous positions 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, Fisch began his career as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant and Kappellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper. He has since conducted at major opera houses worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and Semperoper Dresden. His symphonic engagements have included leading prestigious orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Orchestre National de France, as well as top American orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia.

In 2023, Fisch was appointed Music Director of the Tiroler Festspiele in Erl, Austria, where he collaborates with the festival’s General Manager, celebrated tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Their inaugural season premiered in December 2024. The festival, held three times annually, features a diverse program of orchestral and operatic performances, chamber music, and Lied. Known for its dedication to the works of Richard Wagner, the Tiroler Festspiele will present Parsifal during Easter 2025, with Fisch conducting and Kaufmann in the title role. Each year will see the addition of a new Wagner opera production.

In 2025, Fisch’s engagements include La Bohème, Wagner’s Parsifal, and three Verdi operas at the Tiroler Festspiele, Verdi’s Il Trovatore with the West Australian Opera, Britten’s War Requiem in Düsseldorf, among other performances. Recent highlights include Reimann’s Lear at Teatro Real de Madrid, Carmen at the Vienna Staatsoper, and Dialogues des Carmélites at the Israeli Opera.

Fisch’s award-winning discography includes Bruckner’s Symphony No.8, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and tenor Stuart Skelton’s debut solo album Shining Knight, all recorded with WASO. His critically acclaimed releases also feature Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole with the Munich Radio Orchestra and the complete Brahms symphonies with WASO, released on ABC Classic. His two recordings of Wagner’s Ring Cycle — with the Seattle Opera and the State Opera of South Australia — garnered widespread acclaim, with the latter winning ten Helpmann Awards, including Best Opera and Best Music Direction.

In addition to his conducting achievements, Fisch is an accomplished pianist. His solo recording of Wagner piano transcriptions for the Melba label showcases his versatility and artistry.

Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.

Alexander Gavrylyuk
Piano

A stunningly virtuosic pianist, Alexander is internationally recognised for his electrifying and poetic performances. His performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 at the BBC Proms was described as “revelatory” by The Times and “electrifying” by Limelight. Alexander was Artist in Residence at Wigmore Hall for the 2023-24 season.

Highlights of the 2024-25 season include concerto debuts with Hamburger Symphoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony, Phil Zuid, Enescu Philharmonic and Taiwan National Symphony, as well as return visits to Rotterdam Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony and New Zealand Symphony.

Recent highlights also include NDR Hannover, Bournemouth Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and São Paulo Symphony. This season also sees a return to the Concertgebouw Master Pianists Series and a solo recital debut at Philharmonie Luxembourg, as well as recitals throughout Australia and the UK.

Alexander collaborates regularly with conductors including Rafael Payer, Thomas Sondergard, Kirill Karabits, Edward Gardner, Sir Donald Runnicles, Juraj Valcuha and Gustavo Gimeno.

Born in Ukraine in 1984 and holding Australian citizenship, Alexander began his piano studies at the age of seven and gave his first concerto performance when he was nine years old. At the age of 13, Alexander moved to Sydney where he lived until 2006. He won First Prize and Gold Medal at the Horowitz International Piano Competition (1999), First Prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (2000), and Gold Medal at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition (2005).

As a recitalist, Alexander has performed at the Musikverein in Vienna, Tonhalle Zurich, Victoria Hall Geneva, Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Master Pianists Series, Suntory Hall, Tokyo Opera City Hall, Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Cologne Philharmonie, Tokyo City Concert Hall, San Francisco, City Recital Hall in Sydney and Melbourne Recital Centre. Gavrylyuk has appeared at many of the world’s foremost festivals, including the Hollywood Bowl, Bravo! Vail Colorado, Mostly Mozart, the Ruhr Festival and the Kissinger Sommer International Music Festival. Alexander is currently Artist in Residence at Chautauqua Institution.

James Ledger
(b.1966)

The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic was written to mark the start of WASO’s residency at Winthrop Hall. It is a celebratory ‘light show’ for orchestra. Imagery of fireworks, kaleidoscopes, stained-glass windows and camera obscura (the working title) were never far from my mind as I attempted to render these in sound. I thought of it as a type of colour-fanfare – music that glistens, fizzes and even bends.

The piece takes fanfare-calls consisting of a long note followed by several short notes that progressively bend lower in pitch. These are then reversed, (short notes followed by long, with the pitch moving back up) so that each complete call appears with its mirror image. These calls connect to form larger, slow moving ascending lines that rip and tear into each other the same way exploding fireworks collide in the night sky.

Like a Concerto for Orchestra, most instruments get a moment in the spotlight. There are prominent parts for percussion (bells, glockenspiel and crotales), celesta and harp. Most of the piece is highly charged, but there is a contemplative middle section – wind and horn calls echo against a backdrop of subdued high string chords, timpani and pizzicato double bass. The piece moves on, gaining momentum, propelled by deceptively simple repeating rhythmic patterns and accelerating tempos. An orchestral climax erupts after a rapid ascent through the orchestra: the music suspended, fizzing in the air before one final flourish in the percussion, harp and trumpet bring the work to a close.

The Light Fantastic was commissioned by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra with generous support from Geoff Stearn.

James Ledger ©

World Premiere Performance:
6 March 2025. Asher Fisch, conductor.

Instrumentation:
three flutes (all doubling piccolos), three oboes (third doubling cor anglais), three clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons and one contrabassoon; four horns, 3 trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani, three percussionists, harp, celesta and strings.

Sergei Rachmaninov
(1873-1943)

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43

On leaving Russia for good in 1917, Rachmaninov descended into a composerly silence. While he busied himself with his self-appointed task of acquiring a concert pianist’s repertoire, so that he could earn a steady income, he ceased composing altogether.

After settling in the USA, he gave 40 concerts in four months during his first season there. But he gradually reduced his concert commitments until, in 1925, he had nine months free of performances. During this period, he composed his first post-Russian pieces, Three Russian Songs for Chorus and Orchestra, which were well received, and the Piano Concerto No.4, which was greeted with widespread indifference. Rachmaninov was always sensitive about his own music, and his eagerness to bring a new concerto into his repertoire – for his first three were by now very popular works – had been seriously rebuffed by the Fourth Concerto’s failure after its 1927 debut. He did not produce another work for four years.

When the Variations on a Theme of Corelli for solo piano appeared in 1931, they not only signalled a more astringent approach to harmonic language and musical texture, but indicated that a large-scale variation structure might serve Rachmaninov’s musical needs better than the more traditional concerto structure in which success had so recently eluded him.

So, the Corelli Variations, still not particularly popular, might be thought of as the moodier, introspective dress rehearsal for the work that was to follow, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The Corelli ‘theme’ Rachmaninov chose was actually not by Corelli at all, but was the Baroque popular tune La Folia, which forms the basis of a movement in Corelli’s Violin Sonata Op.5 No.12. It was to another celebrated work for violin that Rachmaninov turned for the Rhapsody: the 24th Caprice of Paganini that had already been mined with distinguished results by Liszt and Brahms, not to mention Paganini himself. How confident Rachmaninov must have felt about himself – a man so often pessimistic about his musical caprice achievements – to be exploring the theme yet further, in a big work for piano and orchestra.

The Rhapsody attained an instant popularity that has never waned. Rachmaninov finally had a new ‘concerto’ to play, and was asked to do so frequently. The work has wit, charm, shapeliness, a clear sense of colour, strong rhythmic impetus and a dashing, suitably fiendish solo part that translates Paganini’s legendary virtuosity into a completely different musical context.

In the Rhapsody, Rachmaninov seems to grasp the big picture and distil a sense of unity, from variation to variation, that he does not achieve in the more extended forms of the Fourth Concerto. Yet the Rhapsody’s theme and 24 variations actually behave like a four-movement work. Variations 1 to 11 form a quick first movement with cadenza; Variations 12 to 15 supply the equivalent of a scherzo/ minuet; Variations 16 to 18, the slow movement; and the final six variations, the dashing finale.

We actually hear the first variation – a skeletal march that evokes Paganini’s bony frame – before the theme itself. The ensuing variations are increasingly animated and decorative until Variation 7 gives us a first stately glimpse, on the piano, of the Dies irae plainchant, with the strings muttering the Paganini theme against it. This old funeral chant features prominently in Rachmaninov’s output. Sometimes, as in his final work, the Symphonic Dances, he uses it without irony, but its appearances in the Rhapsody are essentially sardonic. It appears again in Variation 10.

In the celebrated 18th Variation, Rachmaninov uses his sleight of hand to turn Paganini’s theme upside down and create a luxuriant, much admired (and much imitated) melody of his own. Rachmaninov is reported to have said of it: ‘This one is for my agent.’ The six final variations evoke Paganini’s legendary left-hand pizzicato playing (Variation 19) and the demonic aspects of the Paganini legend, with more references to the Dies irae and an increasing emphasis on pianistic and orchestral virtuosity in the last two variations. Just as a final violent outburst of the Dies irae seems to be leading us to a furious crash-bang coda, we are left instead with a nudge and a wink, as Rachmaninov’s final masterpiece for piano and orchestra bids us a sly farewell.

Abridged from a note by Phillip Sametz © 2000

First performance:
7 November 1934; the Philadelphia Orchestra. Rachmaninov, soloist; Leopold Stokowski, conductor.

First WASO performance:
16 January 1957. Donald Thornton, soloist; James Robertson, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
5-6 April 2019. Behzod Abduraimov, soloist; Jaime Martín, conductor.

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)

Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67

Allegro con brio
Andante con moto
Allegro–
Allegro

But a scant group of Viennese music-lovers seems to have braved the cold of Thursday 22 December 1808 to attend the Theater-an-der-Wien to witness music history being made. Beethoven himself was playing his G-major Concerto for the first time in public, and he was also to direct the premieres of both his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies; and (since he wanted to give the chorus something spectacular to round off the program) the specially composed Choral Fantasia, Op.80, as well. For good measure, he played an improvisation at the keyboard, and there were choral movements from his Mass in C and the scena Ah! perfido.

Not only was the theatre cold and the program too long, but the orchestra was antagonistic, the music under-rehearsed, and a confusion in the Choral Fantasia forced Beethoven to call a halt and begin again. In such untoward circumstances, Grove declares, are the regenerators of mankind born into the world!

‘So, fate knocks at the door,’ Beethoven is reported to have said of the peremptory four-note figure that opens this most famous of symphonies – probably at least a decade after the music was written. It may simply have reflected his mood at that moment. Beethoven was constantly concerned with his personal fate; and he was also prone to toss off casual remarks about his music which tended to be confusing or contradictory. There is no evidence that there was any cogent theme of Fate in his mind while he was writing the symphony.

At all events, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is indisputably a distillation and culmination of purely musical thought processes which had been developing in his mind –and his sketchbooks – for years. Themes for all first three movements exist in sketchbooks dating from at least as early as 1800 and 1801 – which were not, for Beethoven, years of disillusionment or burgeoning musical Romanticism. And he achieves his objective, after the broad grandeur of the Eroica, of creating a taut, compact symphony of unprecedented intensity. There is not a single surplus note. Conciseness was ensured when Beethoven abandoned after a few performances his original idea of having additional repeats of the scherzo and trio, as in the Fourth Symphony (and, indeed, in the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies). Though he never formally forsook the exposition repeat marked in the finale, it is rarely played.

In creating a symphonic drama of hitherto unparalleled power and tautness, Beethoven’s means remain largely the traditional contrasts of subject and countersubject; contrasts of dynamics and tempo; the drama of key relationships; and the established four-movement structure. His first movement adheres to classical sonata form, with two clearly contrasted groups of subjects; one powerful and assertive, the other gentler, more pliable. As for being built up out of its short, four-note opening figure, it was probably Felix Weingartner who recognised that in fact the opposite is true: the movement is remarkable for the very length and variety of its sentences. The Andante is predominantly reflective but has moments of confident energy which are, however, dispelled by the darkly brooding scherzo and its ominously hushed transition to the finale, where trombones are about to blaze their way into symphonic history for the first time.

Where Beethoven builds on traditional form is in the brilliant bridge from scherzo to finale (an unusual, though not unprecedented, practice). He uses the four-note figure at the opening of the first movement as a motif which has echoes in the scherzo (where it appears on the horns), in the transition to the finale (drum-tap rhythm), and in the finale itself. Also in the finale, a fragmentary return of the scherzo prepares the triumphant recapitulation, which then carries all before it.

Such musical links and back references have both a structurally unifying and dramatic effect, and it is tempting to read a philosophical program into them. The only certainty, however, is that the Fifth Symphony journeys from darkness in C minor, through some musical valley of the shadow of death, to a Beethovenian vision of heavenly light in C major. The composer knew well the example of light blazing out of C minor into the major at the words ‘And there was light’ in Haydn’s Creation.

If the symphony can be construed as in some way a metaphor for the indomitability of the human spirit, then perhaps the triumph of the finale, emerging in starkest contrast from the gloom of the scherzo, asserts a conviction that the quality of achievement is a reflection of the adversity overcome.

Antony Cane © 1978/2011

First Performance:
22 December 1808, Vienna.

Most Recent WASO Performance:
26-27 November 2021. Johannes Fritzsch, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, bassoons and contrabassoon; two horns, two trumpets, three trombones; timpani and strings.

Tim White OAM

Your Wesfarmers Arts Digital Pre-concert Talk for Beethoven's Fifth is delivered by Tim White.

Tim White is Head of Classical Music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). Tim was born in Canberra and grew up on Christmas Island, where he fell in love with LP records of orchestral music and ‘The Beatles’. He studied percussion in Sydney, Denmark and Germany, and joined WASO in 1985 – where he performed over 3,000 concerts during his 28 years as Principal Percussion. Tim has performed with all of Australia’s full-time orchestras, and played percussion concertos with WASO, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and in Germany.

He holds two Masters degrees, is a Fulbright Scholar and Churchill Fellow, won the Australian Award for Teaching Excellence in 2015, and was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2021 for his services to music. Seventy-five of Tim’s former percussion students are now enjoying full-time careers as professional musicians. Tim loves music’s ability to touch our hearts and souls, to create meaning and beauty in our lives, and to bring people and communities together. He is married to WASO violist Rachael Kirk.

Christmas Cheer at Perth Children’s Hospital

Adorned with festive headbands and shirts, and surrounded by tinsel, WASO musicians and members of the WASO Chorus performed to hundreds of patients, staff, and families at the Perth Children’s Hospital in December. Organised as part of the ongoing Hospital Orchestra Project (HOP) collaboration between WASO and the School of Special Educational Needs: Medical & Mental Health, WASO performed a merry day of carols and festivities throughout the hospital.

Assistant Concertmaster, Semra Lee, and Principal 2nd Violin, Zak Rowntree, started the day by performing duets throughout the wards – reaching the schools’ classrooms, as well as children unable to leave wards. Meanwhile, the heavenly voices of the WASO Chorus rang out through the atrium as they performed festive carols. Afterwards, the musicians and Chorus combined for a Christmas concert led by performer (and WASO Crescendo Lead) Lauren Ashlea Fraser. All children were gifted a goodie bag featuring a small musical instrument to take away.

HOP events continue in 2025 with further ward visits in April.