Iván Fischer

Born into a family of musicians in Budapest in 1951, Iván Fischer studied piano, violin, cello, and composition in his native city before completing his conducting training with Hans Swarowsky and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Following his first years as a professional in Great Britain, he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983, which he has led to international fame and over which he still presides as Artistic Director. He has also served as Music Director of the Opéra de Lyon and Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. From 2012 to 2018, he helmed the Konzert­haus Orchestra in Berlin, which subsequently named him Honorary Conductor. He has been associated with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra as Honorary Guest Conductor since 2021. In August 2024 he took over the direction of the European Union Youth Orchestra. Fischer regularly conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. Following guest appearances at international opera houses, he established the Iván Fischer Opera Company with a reformist vision of presenting independent opera productions that he himself also directs. In 2018, he founded the Vicenza Opera Festival; he additionally launched the Budapest Mahler Festival and the Bridging Europe Festival. For his services in promoting international cultural relations, the World Economic Forum in Davos presented him with the Crystal Award. Fischer has also been extremely creative in developing new concert formats, inventing the Cocoa Concerts for toddlers, Surprise Concerts, and the “Mittendrin” series, in which the audience is seated amid the musicians themselves. He has composed chamber music, choral works, the music theater piece The Red Heifer, and the children’s opera The Gruffalo. Fischer was honored with the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s most significant cultural award, in 2006 and in 2011 received the Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Iván Fischer is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music, and an honorary citizen of Budapest.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 26 August 1986 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in music by Liszt and Schubert.

August 2024