Asher Fisch Conducts Dvořák 9

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, Asher 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.

Daniel Shmitt
Viola

Daniel is WASO’s Principal Viola.

Daniel has been a member of Bayerische Staatsoper Orchestra in Munich, and held principal positions with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and the Royal Opera Orchestra “La Monnaie" in Brussels under the baton of Philippe Herreweghe and Antonio Pappano. He has also appeared as Guest Principal with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre des Champs Élysées Paris, and the Opera Australia Orchestra.

Born in Germany, Daniel began his music studies with violin and piano. He studied viola with Bruno Giuranna at the University of the Arts in Berlin, completing his Master's Degree. His intensive study of chamber music includes lessons with Franco Gulli and Joseph Silverstein.

He was the violist in the Lenos String Quartet, which won the National German Music Competition. He has performed with Lenos throughout Europe and performances have been broadcast on SR Kultur, NDR2 (Germany) and Radio DRS (Switzerland).

As a chamber musician he has performed at numerous festivals in Europe, the UK, South Korea and Japan. In Australia, he has appeared at the Melbourne Recital Centre, performing Schumann's Piano Quintet with Emanuel Ax, Wilma Smith, Dale Barltrop, and David Berlin.

Daniel Schmitt plays a viola made in 1964 by Otto A. Erdesz in Toronto, Canada.

Zoltán Kodály
(1882–1967)

Variations on a Hungarian Folksong, The Peacock

Moderato
Var.1: Con brio
Var.2
Var.3: Più mosso
Var.4: Poco calmato
Var.5: Appassionato
Var.6: Tempo (calmato)
Var.7: Vivo
Var.8: Più vivo
Var.9
Var.10: Molto vivo
Var.11: Andante espressivo
Var.12: Adagio
Var.13: Tempo de Marcia funèbre
Var.14: Andante, poco rubato
Var.15: Allegro giocoso
Var.16: Maestoso
Finale: Vivace

Kodály, along with his friend and colleague Béla Bartók, was a pioneer in collecting, recording and notating the folk music of eastern Europe and beyond. In fact, the two first met on a collecting expedition as they both sought new sources of melodic inspiration; in the course of collecting they became more acutely aware of the imminent demise of folk music and resolved to preserve as much as they could.

In 1906, Kodály was awarded a PhD for his research in that area. Kodály also brought his considerable intellect to bear on the theory of music education, believing that it was the duty of all schools to expose young children to the ‘life-giving stream of good music’ and devising a method of teaching in use worldwide. Kodály was no less committed as a composer, using the resources of folk music and Gregorian chant to produce work that is beautiful, well-crafted and integrated. Though he was inevitably eclipsed by Bartók, there was no rancour on either side, and the two remained close friends and colleagues.

In 1927, Kodály had established the publication Hungarian Musical Essays to document research in folk music, and a decade later produced his monograph Hungarian Folk Music. The same period saw his emergence as a major composer, beginning with the ‘Singspiel’, Háry János, in 1926 and continuing through a series of substantial orchestral works inspired by the Hungarian music he so loved. But, like Bartók, Kodály was appalled by the rise of fascism in Europe generally, and Hungary in particular, and in 1938 joined his friend in protesting against the state’s growing obsession with racial ‘purity’. Unlike Bartók, however, Kodály remained in Hungary during the war and after.

The song Felszállott a páva (Fly, peacock, fly) was traditionally sung to a tune that Kodály believed to be of great antiquity, but whose text was bound to be contentious in Europe on the brink of war. Kodály made a choral arrangement of the song, in which the sight of a peacock in flight gives heart to a group of prisoners, and then used the tune as the basis for this work, composed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1939. The ‘Peacock Variations’ were, predictably, banned in Hungary from 1940 for the duration.

The 25-minute work, consisting of an introduction and finale that bookend 16 short variations, is a tour de force of orchestration, an almost cinematic celebration of the Hungarian people and landscapes; Kodály had studied the music of Debussy and Richard Strauss, among others, and had developed a brilliant orchestral technique. The largely pentatonic tune leads to musical treatments that at times recall the music of Vaughan Williams in Britain, and the orchestral palette encompasses stirring dance rhythms, fanfares, elaborate birdsong for woodwind soloists and passages of pensive introspection, especially in the funeral march of Variation 13. Despite the simplicity of the musical material, Kodály’s harmony is sometimes uncompromisingly astringent, a reminder that those observing the peacock’s flight were not themselves free.

Gordon Kerry © 2012

First performance:
23 November 1939, Amsterdam. Willem Mengelberg conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

First WASO performance:
This is the first performance of the work by WASO.

Instrumentation:
three flutes (3rd also piccolo), two oboes (2nd also cor anglais), two clarinets and two bassoons; four horns, three trumpets and three trombones; timpani, percussion and strings.

Béla Bartók
(1881–1945)

ed. Tibor Serly
(1901–1978)

Viola Concerto, Op. Posth.

Moderato –
Adagio religioso –
Allegro vivace

We are so keen for viola and orchestral works from the big names in composition that we are apt to downplay the fact that Béla Bartók, one of the biggest names in composition in the early 20th century, did not complete this work. It was completed by his good friend Tibor Serly, drawing admittedly on a deep knowledge of Bartók’s style and 13 pages of sketches left by Bartók at his death.

1945 was shaping up to be a good year for Bartók. After several dispiriting years in the USA, the premiere of his Sonata for solo violin, together with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra, combined with the remission of his leukemia and a more settled financial situation, had left him in high spirits. Moreover, he now received a number of requests for new compositions, including one for a viola concerto from the famous violist William Primrose (later to move to Wollongong, where he was an influence on Richard Tognetti).

After accepting Primrose’s commission, Bartók wrote to him reassuringly on 5 August:

"However embryonic the state of the work still is, the general plan and ideas are already fixed. So, I can tell you that it will be in 4 movements: a serious Allegro, a Scherzo, a (rather short) slow movement, and a finale beginning Allegretto and developing the tempo to an Allegro molto. Each movement, or at least 3 of them, will be preceded by a (short) recurring introduction (mostly solo of the viola), a kind of ritornello.”

He further informed Primrose on 8 September that the work was ready in draft ‘so that only the score has to be written, which means a purely mechanical work…in five or six weeks.’

But Bartók became ill again. On 21 September he was visited by Serly. Asked whether the Viola Concerto would be ready, Bartók answered enigmatically: ‘Yes, and no.’ When he died five days later, it lay beside his bed on 13 pages of densely written manuscript.

After Bartók’s death, his widow and son asked Serly to complete the Viola Concerto. While for its creator scoring the work may have been ‘purely mechanical’, only he knew what his hieroglyphics meant. Sketches were written on any available space on unnumbered pages. Corrections had been made in ink and either rewritten elsewhere on the manuscript or by scratching out the errors and writing over the existing material. Moreover, as Sandor Kovacs points out in The Bartok Companion, the draft of the slow movement was only two-thirds of a page, with the closing movement in most places merely an outline of the viola part.

Yet there were clues. Bartók had calculated movement lengths: for the first movement, 10 minutes 20 seconds; 5 minutes 10 seconds for the second movement; and 4 minutes 45 seconds for the third. Clearly, he had given up the idea of four movements, but was still sticking to a ‘(rather short)’ second movement. Serly knew that Bartók had also mentioned to Primrose that the orchestration would be ‘rather…more transparent than in the Violin Concerto’. But it took Serly many months just to work out which was the first bar.

There are, of course, criticisms of Serly’s reconstruction, which took four years. Kovacs suggests that the pounding minims which precede the final movement were intended by Bartók to precede the slow movement, but that Serly, unaware that there was meant to be a ‘kind of ritornello’ preceding each movement, could not have risked reading so much into Bartók’s manuscript. Serly also apparently ignored one of Bartók’s few specific mentions of instrumentation when he gave the strings rather than the timpani the accompaniment to the viola’s opening solo.

Serly’s reconstruction contains many of Bartók’s ‘trademark’ features - the use of cadenzas to mark important structural divisions in the first movement (one almost a recitative); the middle section of ‘night music’ (Bartók’s typical evocation of the sporadic sounds of the night) in the second movement; and a vigorous rondo finale in perpetual semiquaver motion which captures the nature of Hungarian folk dance, with a central trio presenting a bagpipe tune, complete with droned fifths in the bass.

Noted Bartók scholar Halsey Stevens has said, ‘there will always be a reluctance to accept the Viola Concerto as an authentic work’. Nevertheless, Serly was convinced that what he worked from ‘contained’ the finished draft - it’s one of the reasons why he composed no extra music to fill in what gaps there were. And what he produced has entered the repertoire as one of Bartók’s most often played works.

Gordon Kalton Williams
Symphony Australia ©1998

First Performance:
2 December 1949, Minneapolis. William Primrose, viola. Antal Doráti, conductor.

Most Recent WASO Performance:
18-19 September 2009. Ruth Killius, viola. Paul Daniel, conductor.

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

Antonín Dvořák
(1841–1904)

Symphony No.9 in E minor, Op.95 From the New World

Adagio – Allegro molto
Largo
Scherzo (Molto vivace)
Allegro con fuoco

Dvořák composed his ninth, and last, symphony in New York between January and May 1893. As his secretary, Josef Kovařík, was about to deliver the score to the conductor of the first performance, Anton Seidl, Dvořák suddenly wrote on the title page, ‘From the New World’. That expression had been used in a welcome speech following his arrival in New York the previous September. Kovařík said the inscription was just ‘the Master’s little joke’; but the ‘joke’ has, ever since, begged the question: how American is the New World Symphony?

Dvořák could have written his ‘New World’ inscription, as in the welcome speech, in English. By writing it in Czech he was seen to be addressing the work, like a picture postcard, to his compatriots back in Europe. At the same time, he challenged listeners to identify depictions of America or elements of American music. Either way, the composer was seen to be meeting the desire of his employer, music patron Jeannette Thurber, for music which might be identified as American.

Mrs Thurber had persuaded Dvořák to become director of her National Conservatory of Music in New York. Besides teaching students from a wide spectrum of society, he found he was expected to show Americans how to create a national music. So, controversially and perhaps naively, in a country which had not forgotten the Civil War, the egalitarian Dvořák told Americans they would find their future music in their roots, whether native or immigrant, and in particular the songs of the African Americans.

From his familiarity with gypsies in Europe, Dvořák had famously composed a set of Gypsy Melodies (including ‘Songs my mother taught me’), and was thus receptive when introduced soon after his arrival to the songs of the African Americans – the sorrow songs and spiritual songs of the plantation. As a devout man of humble rural origins, he responded to the pathos and religious fervour of the poor.

He told the New York Herald that the two middle movements of his new symphony were inspired by Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, a work he had long ago read in Czech and which Mrs Thurber was now suggesting for an opera. The famous slow movement, he said, was inspired by Hiawatha’s wooing of Minnehaha and the Scherzo by dancing at the wedding feast. Without using Native American melodies, he claimed to have given the Scherzo ‘the local colour of Indian music’ – an effect probably limited to repetitive rhythms and primitive harmonies.

As music, the New World Symphony is entirely characteristic of its composer (the ‘simple Czech musician’ he liked to style himself) and owes nothing to any specific ‘borrowings’ from the indigenous or African American musics Dvořák encountered in the ‘New World’. The ersatz-spiritual Goin’ home was actually arranged from Dvořák’s Largo movement by one of his students, not the other way around.

Strong non-musical impressions of America doubtless crowded the composer’s mind as he worked on the symphony. The surging flow and changing moods of the outer movements perhaps reflect the frenetic bustle of New York. The vast, desolate prairies Dvořák found ‘sad unto despair’, and this may be felt to underpin the deep yearning of the Largo (together with the composer’s own homesickness for his native Bohemia). As if to emphasise his personal longing for home, Dvořák uses a Czech dance as the central trio section of the third movement.

Musical ideas recur in the New World Symphony to link the symphonic structure. The two main themes of the first movement are recalled in festive mood in the Largo, at the brassy climax of the famous melody first stated by the cor anglais. They figure again in the coda of the Scherzo, the first theme (somewhat disguised) also making three appearances earlier in the movement. The main themes of both middle movements recur in the finale, and the main themes of all three preceding movements are reviewed in the final coda. There, a brief dialogue between the themes of the first and last movements is cut short by a conventional cadence, spiced by unexpected wind colouring in the last chord of all.

Abridged from an annotation © Anthony Cane

First Performance:
16 December 1893, New York. Anton Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic.

First WASO Performance:
28 October 1939. Malcolm Sargent, conductor.

Most Recent WASO Performance:
22-23 April 2022. Eduardo Strausser, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets and two bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani, percussion and strings.