Artist database

One of the most renowned conductors of today's world of classical music, Iván Fischer was born into a musical Hungarian family in 1951. He attended the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest where he studied piano, violin, cello and composition. He continued his musical studies in Vienna, where he graduated in Hans Swarowsky's famous conducting class. He became interested in early music and worked closely with Nikolaus Harnoncourt as harpsichordist and conductor. His international career started at the age of 25 when he won the BBC's Rupert Foundation Conducting Competition and with it invitations to conduct all the major British orchestras. Extremely active in opera, Fischer was from 1984 to 1989 music director of the Kent Opera and has also conducted productions at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, the Bastille Opera of Paris and the opera houses of Zurich, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Brussels and Budapest. In 1983 he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra together with his colleague and friend, the pianist Zoltán Kocsis. The success of this new orchestra was quickly recognised by audiences and critics throughout the world and invitations to prestigious festivals and concert series were forthcoming. Iván Fischer is in great demand as a guest conductor with many of Europe's major orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchester, Westdeutscher Rundfunk Orchester, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre National de France and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Principal Guest Conductor 1989-1996 of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, he has conducted in North America numerous orchestras, including the Baltimore, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles Philharmonic, St.Paul Chamber, St.Louis Symphony and San Francisco Symphony orchestras. He is founder of the Hungarian Mahler Society, and patron of the British Kódály Academy. He has received the Gold Medal of Merit of the President of the Republic of Hungary, and for promoting international cultural relations he was awarded with the Christal Award by the World Economic Forum of Davos. In 1984 he recevied the title of Merited Artist, and in 2006 he was awarded one of the highest Hungarian state award, the Kossuth Prize. Iván Fischer has recorded extensively for Philips, CBS, Sony, Decca, Hungaroton and Quintana. In 2024 he was given the Conductor of the Year Prize of Bartók Radio.