The Maverick

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.

Lukáš Vondráček
Piano

In a career spanning over two decades, the indisputable winner of the Grand Prix at the 2016 International Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition, Lukáš Vondráček has travelled the world and performed with the foremost orchestras such as The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, West Australian Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan, Czech Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony, and Oslo Philharmonic.

He is a frequent collaborator of conductors such as Jakub Hrůša, Marin Alsop, Paavo Järvi, Gianandrea Noseda, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Christoph Eschenbach, Klaus Mäkelä, Michael Tilson Thomas, Giancarlo Guerrero, Manfred Honeck, Xian Zhang, Pietari Inkinen, Vasily Petrenko, and Stéphane Denève, among many others.

In recitals, Lukáš has performed at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Flagey in Brussels, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wiener Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and to renowned festivals such as Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Edinburgh International Festival, Chopin and his Europe, Le Piano Symphonique at KKL, PianoEspoo in Finland, Prague Spring Festival, and Lille Piano Festival.

Lukáš Vondráček’s 2025/26 distinguished season highlights include collaborations with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under Elim Chan, Belgian National Orchestra under Antony Hermus, Brussels Philharmonic under Kazushi Ono, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop, West Australian Symphony Orchestra under Asher Fisch performing the full cycle of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos. Further collaborations with the orchestras this season include the Malmo Opera Orchestra, Slovenian RTVE Symphony Orchestra, Romanian National Radio Orchestra, and Janáček Philharmonic. This season, recital appearances, among others, include Lukáš’ returns to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in New York.

At the age of four, Lukáš Vondráček made his first public appearance. As a fifteenyear- old in 2002, he made his debut with Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy, which was followed by a major US tour in 2003. His natural and assured musicality and remarkable technique have long marked him out as a gifted and mature musician. He has achieved worldwide recognition by receiving many international awards, foremost first prizes at the Hilton Head and San Marino International Piano Competitions and Unisa International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as the Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award at the 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

Lukáš Vondráček obtained an Artist Diploma from Boston’s New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Hung-Kuan Chen, graduating with honours in 2012.

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)

The Creatures of Prometheus – Ballet, Op.43: Overture

Beethoven’s only ballet music was written for a ‘heroic and allegorical’ ballet conceived by the Italian dancer Salvatore Viganò and produced in Vienna in 1800. The story combines the myth of Prometheus, who snatched fire from the sky, with that of Pygmalion, the sculptor whose statue came to life. Prometheus uses the fire to fashion two statues, a man and a woman, from clay; but they resist all his efforts to make them human, stubbornly remaining inert. Disappointed, he is about to destroy his handiwork when the god Pan persuades him to lead them to Mount Parnassus, where they are educated by Apollo, Orpheus and the Muses. Acquiring the ability to think and feel, they begin to appreciate the beauty of nature and the civilising influences of music, comedy, tragedy and dance.

In Beethoven’s mind, the character of Prometheus was identified with the young Napoleon. In the finale of the ballet, a theme which could almost be called the refrain of Beethoven’s young manhood makes an early appearance. It is a theme associated with heroism, and here treated as a basis for variations, as it was to be in the Variations for Piano Op.35, and most memorably and magically exalted, in the finale of the Eroica Symphony, originally dedicated to Napoleon.

The Overture prefigures the grand conclusion of the ballet. From the first notes, in which Beethoven commands his audience’s attention by the tonal ambiguity of a discord leading out of the main key, the music is passionate and noble.

Adapted from a note by David Garrett.

First performance of the ballet:
28 March 1801, Vienna.

Most recent WASO performance:
3–4 May 2024. Alpesh Chauhan, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; two horns, two trumpets; timpani and strings.

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)

Piano Concerto No.1 in C, Op.15

Allegro con brio
Largo
Rondo (Allegro)

When Beethoven first performed this Concerto in Prague in 1798, it had a demoralising effect on his peers. ‘Beethoven’s magnificent playing and particularly daring flights of his improvisation moved me strangely,’ the Czech pianist and composer Václav Jan Tomášek wrote subsequently. ‘Indeed, I felt so humbled that I did not touch my own piano for several days afterwards.’

Given an impact like that, together with the fact that Beethoven himself thought highly enough of the Concerto to write out three different cadenzas for it, it’s surprising that he described it to a publisher as ‘not one of my best compositions of that type’. (He’d said a similar thing about his first concerto, now known as No.2. Evidently the young Beethoven had a lot to learn about stimulating a publisher’s interest and negotiating a fee!). In any case, despite having been composed after the B flat Concerto, this C major work was the first to be published and hence bears the title of ‘No.1’.

In fact, Beethoven had performed both of his first two concertos on that visit to Prague in 1798, playing this one on the first night and ‘No.2’ on the second. This C major Concerto calls for a slightly larger orchestra than its predecessor, employing clarinets, trumpets and timpani, and while they are used quite sparingly, they bring with them a greater expressive range within the orchestra.

Where the opening movement of the B flat work uses up to nine themes, here in the opening to the C major work this is reduced to a rather more manageable four. Again, there is a lengthy orchestral ritornello. Indeed, we hear the second subject, in the comparatively distant key of E flat, before the soloist enters. When at last we do hear the piano, it’s with an entirely new idea which makes only a fleeting appearance in the Concerto as a whole.

This opening movement is laid out on a grand scale and calls for extreme virtuosity from the soloist. It’s in movements like this that we gain some idea of just what a good pianist Beethoven himself must have been. It and the Largo which follows were singled out for particular praise when the work was reviewed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1800.

The Largo moves into the key of A flat with a glorious melody which generates great richness of tone throughout the orchestra. There is an inherently ‘poetic’ feeling in the rapt stillness of this movement and it’s filled with subtle lyrical invention, ending with a coda in which the piano weaves in and out of the clarinets.

Then Beethoven repeats the formula not only of his ‘Second’ Concerto but also of those of Mozart in finishing with a boisterous Rondo. Its ‘scherzando’ nature is characterised by an almost vulgar main theme on piano and then a series of folk-like dance episodes, as if the listener is transported into some local holiday celebration.

© Martin Buzacott

First Performance:
There is uncertainty over exactly when the Piano Concerto No.1 was first performed. It is generally held that Beethoven premiered it on a visit to Prague in 1798 when it was programmed in the first of two concerts he gave in the Konviktsaal. However, some reports suggest that Beethoven could have performed it as early as March 1795 at the Burgtheater, during the first concert he gave as a composer-virtuoso in Vienna.

First WASO Performance:
26 August 1941. Trixie Shephard, soloist. Clive Douglas, conductor.

Most Recent WASO Performance:
20–21 November 2015. Ingrid Fliter, soloist. Asher Fisch, conductor.

Instrumentation:
one flute, two each of oboes, clarinets and bassoons; two horns, two trumpets; timpani and strings.