Joseph Haydn
“La fedeltà premiata” – Ouvertüre Hob. XXVIII:10
Joseph Haydn
Sinfonie Nr. 97 C-Dur Hob I:97
Béla Bartók
“Herzog Blaubarts Burg” – Oper in einem Akt
Konzertante Aufführung
Adam Fischer
Conductor
Adam Fischer - Conductor
“Fischer adds even more buoyancy by paying scrupulous attention to every detail of the rhythmic articulation.” – The Guardian
Born in Budapest, Adam Fischer is one of the leading conductors of our time. In 1987, he founded the Österreichisch-Ungarische Haydn Philharmonie with musicians from his two home countries, Austria and Hungary, as well as the Haydn Festspiele in Eisenstadt as an international centre for the performance of Haydn’s music.
Whether in Bayreuth, at the Metropolitan Opera, or at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, with the Wiener or Berliner Philharmoniker, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, or at the Salzburger Festspiele, Adam Fischer is recognised by audiences and musicians alike as a mediator between music and the outside world. In 2022, he was awarded with the International Classical Music Award for this lifetime achievements.
Adam Fischer acquired his profound understanding of the opera world and his unusually broad repertoire by taking his first steps as répétiteur (Graz) to Generalmusikdirektor (Freiburg, Kassel, Mannheim and Budapest). His international breakthrough came in 1978 when he took over from Karl Böhm, conducting ‘Fidelio’ at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Since then, he has led thrilling opera evenings at the world’s leading opera houses. His closest links are with the Wiener Staatsoper, where he was appointed Honorary Member in 2017.
Together with the Danish Chamber Orchestra, where he has been Chief Conductor since 1998, he has developed their very own unique style. With award-winning recordings of all Mozart symphonies and a complete Beethoven recording, Adam Fischer ventured into new territory in terms of musical interpretation, which attracted great international attention. Their recording of all Brahms’s symphonies (Naxos 2022) received great critical acclaim. Their most recent project is the recording of Haydn’s Paris and London symphonies for Naxos.
In 2006, Adam Fischer embarked on a new path when he founded the Wagner Days in Budapest: together with Gábor Zoboki, the architect of the Palace of Arts (MÜPA), he realised his idea of performing Wagner’s work in a concert hall using entire space in an all-encompassing artistic experience. The Budapest Wagner Days under Adam Fischer’s artistic leadership have established themselves as a world-class Wagner opera festival, which the New York Times called the “Bayreuth on the Danube”.
As Principal Conductor of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Adam Fischer began a Haydn-Mahler cycle in 2015 which was also received with international enthusiasm. In addition to excellent reviews in all relevant media, his Mahler recordings with the orchestra received the highest distinctions with the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Award and the OPUS KLASSIK 2019 for best orchestra recordings of the year.
Adam Fischer regularly uses his success and his broad international audience to convey important messages about humanity and democracy. For his commitment he has received – among others – the renowned Wolf Prize of the Wolf Foundation in Jerusalem and the Gold Medal in the Arts from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington. He has been a member of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights for more than twenty years and since 2016, he has awarded the annual Human Rights Award of the Tonhalle Düsseldorf. Adam Fischer is also an Honorary Member of the Musikverein für Steiermark in Graz. He holds the honorary Austrian title of Professor, and he has received the Order of Dannebrog from the Queen of Denmark.
Besides his regular activities with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, the Danish Chamber Orchestra, and the Budapest Wagner Days, selected highlights of the 2024/25 season include appearances with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg (Salzburger Festspiele), Wiener Philharmoniker (Mozartwoche Salzburg), the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Brucknerfest Linz), and the Wiener Symphoniker (Musikverein Wien). Opera highlights include ‘Parsifal’ at the Bayerische Staatsoper, ‘Cosi fan tutte’, ‘Zauberflöte’, and ‘Rosenkavalier’ at the Wiener Staatsoper, and ‘Mitridate’ at the Hamburger Staatsoper.
Dorottya Láng
Mezzo-soprano
Dorottya Láng - Mezzo-soprano
Dorottya Láng was born in Budapest and studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In 2011 she won 3rd prize at the Wigmore Hall/ Kohn Foundation International Singing Competition in London, and in 2013 she won the sponsorship prize at the Emmerich Smola Competition in Landau. From 2012 to 2014 the mezzo-soprano was an ensemble member of the Vienna Volksoper, in 2014/2015 she moved to the Nationaltheater Mannheim, and from 2015 to 2018 the Hamburg State Opera was her artistic home. Her repertoire includes roles such as Cherubino (Mozart, “Le nozze di Figaro”), Dorabella (“Così fan tutte”), Octavian (Strauss, “Der Rosenkavalier”), Angelina (Rossini, “La Cenerentola”), Marguerite (Berlioz, “La damnation de Faust”), Orlofsky (Strauss, “Die Fledermaus”), Hansel (Humperdinck, “Hansel and Gretel”), Varvara (Janáček, “Káťa Kabanová”), Hermia (Britten, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”). She will make her debut at the Hungarian State Opera in 2022/2023 as Rosina (Rossini, “Barbiere di Siviglia”), Idamante (Mozart, “Idomeneo”) and as the Composer (Strauss, “Ariadne auf Naxos”).
Dorottya Láng has made guest appearances at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Latvian National Opera, Malmö Opera and the RuhrTriennale, among others. Concerts have taken her, for example, to the Vienna Musikverein, the Vienna Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
She is also regularly active in the Lied scene and has worked closely with pianists such as Helmut Deutsch and Julius Drake. With the role of Judith in Béla Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”, she made her scenic debut at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and Theater Hagen in the 2021/2022 season. She also made her debut as Cenerentola at the Latvian National Opera. She performed as Adriano (Wagner, “Rienzi”) in June 2022 as part of the renowned Budapest Wagner Days with Marc Albrecht on the podium. In the 2022/3023 season she returns to the Vienna Musikverein with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. She will appear for the first time in autumn 2022 with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) as Judith.
Miklós Sebestyén
Baritone
Miklós Sebestyén - Baritone
Miklós Sebestyén was born in Budapest. Trained in various instruments such as flute, guitar and piano in his early years, he eventually decided to make singing his profession. He studied with Prof. László Polgár in Zurich and Prof. Josef Loibl in Munich. After his success at the Belvedere Competition in Vienna in 2010, he sang at opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Bavarian State Opera, Covent Garden London, the Zurich Opera House, the Bregenz Festival, the Royal Opera in Copenhagen and Oslo, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the Welsh National Opera, the Theater an der Wien and others.
Among his most important roles are Mozart’s Figaro, Leporello, Osmin, Sarastro, Don Alfonso; Rossini’s Mustafa (“L’Italiana in Algeri”), Don Magnifico (“La Cenerentola”), Mosé (“Mosé in Egitto”), Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard, Dosifei (Mussorgsky, “Khovanshchina”) Seneca (Monteverdi, “L’Incoronazione di Poppea”), Pizarro (Beethoven, “Fidelio”) Vodnik (Dvorák, “Rusalka”), Prince Gremin (Tchaikovsky, “Eugene Onegin”), Verdi’s Sparafucile (“Rigoletto”), Banco (“Macbeth”) Padre Guardiano (“La Forza del Destino”), Kothner (Wagner, “Meistersinger”), Celio (Prokofiev, “The Love for Three Oranges”), et al. a.
He made an international name for himself with numerous oratorios by J. S. Bach, Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, Paul Ben Haim, Stravinsky; and songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf and Mussorgsky.
He has worked with conductors and directors Riccardo Chailly, Ádám Fischer, Fabio Luisi, Lorin Maazel, Carlo Rizzi, Ulf Schirmer, Robert Carsen, Kasper Holten, David Pountney, Philippe Arlaud, Giancarlo del Monaco, Peter Konwitschny and others.
In October 2022, he will make his debut with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) with Béla Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.”
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
The heart is a pit of murder
Adam Fischer comes to the RSB for the first time and has Hungarian music in his luggage. Yes, Haydn is also a must! Then Bartók, the man-woman drama “Bluebeard’s Castle”. Bluebeard’s castle – according to the lyricist Balázs – is not a real fortress made of stone: it is Bluebeard’s soul. Consequently, it does not need the “mighty Gothic hall” that Balázs nevertheless imagined, blood everywhere: on executioner’s axes, golden jewellery and rose stems. Today, this seems like kitsch on the verge of the ridiculous. So what could be more natural than to perform Bartók’s magnificent music for the psychoanalytical chamber play in the concert hall? “This work is a masterpiece, a compressed tragedy, a musical volcano that erupts for sixty minutes and leaves us with only one wish: to hear the whole thing again.” (Zoltán Kodály)
Concert introduction: 19.10 Uhr, Südfoyer, by Steffen Georgi