Ivan Fischer – Composer’s Portrait

Iván Fischer, known worldwide as a conductor, has recently come to the fore as a composer. Fischer began composing at the age of twenty, writing, as he says, in an avant-garde style fitting for that age. But it all came to an end as he became more and more absorbed by conducting. Some thirty years later, however, the urge to take up the pen again became irresistible: “A feeling as though I found my true self.” He describes himself not as a composer but as a composing conductor, and the many composers whose music he conducts are his teachers and his sources of inspiration.
This CD presents a portrait of the composer Iv.n Fischer. The following liner notes are based largely on his own commentary and on that of Habakuk Traber (who writes for the Deutsches Sinfonie Orchester Berlin).