43 1trtits,.
Outdoor Overture
Israeli conductor opens DSO summer season.
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
ii
n Israeli conductor who
launched his musical career
with an outdoor perfor-
mance will lift his baton at
the Meadow Brook Musical Festival to
open this summer's outdoor season for
the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Asher Fisch, who had his profes-
sional conducting debut with a small
orchestra performing in the Negev,
Presents "Outdoor Overtures" on the
campus of Oakland University on July
7. The concert, his debut appearance
with the Detroit Symphony, follows
close behind a fresh air festival he con-
ducted along the Mediterranean,
where Jessye Norman performed
before tens of thousands of people.
"I've never performed such an over-
ture-rich program," Fisch, 42, says about
his Michigan concert, which will show-
case Copland's An Outdoor Overture,
Mozart's overture to La clemenza di Tito
and Rossini's William Tell Overture.
"I think that people see value in
going to outdoor concerts, and with the
technical facilities that we have, we
should be able to supply almost hall-like
acoustics, If the music mixes well with
the atmosphere and the people are
happy, I think that's what it's all about."
Opening night, celebrated with
fireworks, also will feature violinist
Yura Lee playing Mendelssohn's Violin
Concerto and Wagner's prelude to Act
I of Lohengrin.
Fisch returns the next evening to con-
duct Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 (the
"Pastoral Symphony"), Rachmaninoff's
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and
Kodaly's Dances of Galanta. Jon Kimura
Parker will be featured on piano.
"I like all the fine details of the
[TastOrall," says Fisch, music director
of the New Israeli Opera. "I especially
like the dances because the piece is
one of the best examples of the use of
folk music in classical form. Whenever
I perform or hear it, I see that it really
reaches people. It makes them tap
their feet, but it's on a very high level
of musical thought."
Fisch's musical thoughts began with
piano lessons in Jerusalem, where he
soon realized that he wanted to move
beyond one instrument.
"I didn't want to dedicate my whole
life only to piano because I was interest-
ed in too many other aspects of music
making — chamber music, vocal
music, opera, symphonies," he explains.
"When I went to music school in
Jerusalem, I realized that conducting
was the only profession in music that
encompasses all of these aspects."
While Fisch served in the Israeli
army for four years, he was able to con-
tinue music classes. After completing
military service, he went on to study in
the United States for two summers and
then signed on with the New Israeli
Opera when it opened in 1985.
After meeting and replacing Daniel
Barenboim in a 1990 concert with the
Israel Philharmonic, Fisch became
Barenboim's assistant with the Berlin
Opera. Three years later, he became
music director of the Vienna Volksoper.
Guest appearances have taken him
to the Royal Danish Opera, Opera
Tokyo, Los Angeles Opera and the
Chicago Lyric Opera, as well as sym-
phonies throughout Europe and Asia.
"Conducting an opera is more of a
technical job than conducting an
orchestra," Fisch says.
The maestro explains that opera
demands a process that starts with the
singers, moves on to the stage directors
with the singers, then brings in the
orchestra and finally combines all of the
elements. He finds that today's orches-
tras need conductors to interpret and
inspire, not keep them playing together.
"With an opera, if a conductor
stops for one second, it will fall apart,"
Fisch says. "On the concert stage, a
conductor can stop for huge phases,
and still get results."
Fisch recently decided to give up
his work in Vienna to spend more
time with concert appearances. He
hopes to live in the United States with
his wife, opera singer Linda Pavelka,
and their 10-year-old daughter, Aniko,
to build North American experiences.
"I am happy I made the decision to
leave Vienna before the (antisemitism
there) became such an [open] issue," the
conductor says. "I was living in Vienna
for five years and would have a big prob-
lem with the situation there right now
"When it first happened with
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