The ‘big death trap’ for orchestras

Israeli conductor Asher Fisch argues that orchestras need to avoid this one programming mistake if they want to survive.

Asher Fisch: “Orchestras, particularly in America, have become very polite and politically correct and so they all sound very, very similar.” Credit Daniel James Grant

There was little left after the bombs peeled through the building’s hull. Plastic chairs warped into contorted sculptures of war by the inferno and scattered amid the rubble – the debris of artefacts dating back to the Bronze Age.

The bombing by the Israeli military of Al-Aqsa University in Gaza in January 2024, and with it the al-Madha Cultural Centre in the Khan Yunis district, was particularly distressing for Israeli conductor Asher Fisch. It was here in 2011 that his mentor, friend and compatriot Daniel Barenboim conducted one of the most extraordinary performances of his career, leading an orchestra featuring some of the world’s most storied players serenading a region under crippling blockade with Mozart.

“For me that was a tragic day,” Fisch begins soberly. The bombing happened almost a year after Barenboim announced his retirement from Berlin’s State Opera following a diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease. “It was such a positive thing that happened, (performing) Mozart’s Kleine Nachtmusik. And then they just blew it up.”

Fisch takes in a sharp breath. “(Barenboim’s) dedication to the cause and to peace is unrivalled by any other artist. But we are entering dangerous territory.”

As with his command of the baton, Fisch remains a master of nuance. Fearless but meditated. Born in Jerusalem in 1958, Fisch – originally a pianist – was ­tutored under Barenboim at Berlin’s State Opera before making his way in the United States, where he continues to regularly captain its leading opera companies and orchestras with his trademark coif and dynamic presence.

West Australian Symphony Orchestra principal conductor Asher Fisch

An unexpected invitation to collaborate with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 1999 led to an enduring relationship that was made formal in 2014, when Fisch was appointed the orchestra’s chief conductor – a position he retains to this day.

His decision to accept a posting so far removed from the epicentres of the classical music world was not without risk (“nobody in New York or Vienna pays any attention, it’s like a black hole in my calendar”). But nor was it without calculation.

A signet of Fisch’s tenure has been to nudge the purview of WASO away from Australia’s eastern seaboard and towards Asia, where he sees significant potential in audience development. WASO would go on to tour China in 2016 under Fisch’s mandate – its first international tour in 23 years, with its tensions and triumphs captured in Alan Lindsay’s 2021 documentary Harmony: The Missing Eighth.

While many orchestras worldwide contend with dwindling budgets, Fisch sees the bigger existential peril in diminishing audiences – something he has witnessed across both Europe and the US. The natural reflex of many of his contemporaries is to blame the ageing canon and, in response, to commission contemporary works that directly challenge the orthodoxy. But Fisch vehemently believes this approach only serves to alienate audiences further. Conversely, he equally decries what he perceives to be a culture of fear: orchestras tending towards politeness over provocation.

“The default way of orchestras today is just to play more popular music and to repeat works we know will sell, and this is a big death trap,” he deadpans. “Orchestras, particularly in America, have become very polite and politically correct and so they all sound very, very similar. It does not work. I see (audience) numbers going down everywhere. Orchestras are playing fewer concerts and to smaller audiences. It is a very clear trajectory, and this is not very positive for our beloved artform, I am afraid.”

Fisch believes the future of the industry can be found in plain sight: its past. The works of totemic composers – Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner and Mahler among them – continue to challenge players and audiences. He draws an analogy with blockbuster art galleries from the Louvre in Paris to the Museum of Modern Art in New York: “The art does not change, but the way you can present it and connect it to audiences continually does.”

In WA, this approach has seen him program with an explicit thematic focus on composer over epoch or aesthetic, most notably with Wagner (both Die Walkure and Tristan und Isolde, the latter of which took out two Helpmann Awards in 2019) and Brahms, around whom he staged an entire festival in 2015. Fisch specifically cites Brahms as a sonic agitator who continues to challenge him both emotionally and creatively.

“I am always discovering something new,” he says of the Teutonic doyen of the Romantic epoch, adding that history has an uncanny way of informing the future. “I often revisit Brahms with a contemporary eye. I constantly see him in a new light – like all of us, a person who had problems and suffered and endured pain. Complex. It is all there. If you want to really shape the sound of an orchestra play Brahms.”

Fisch suddenly falls quiet, then turns deftly to the many political tensions cindering worldwide today.

“Look, it would be pretentious of me to say music can (create serious change), but musicians can. Daniel Barenboim did. But there has been a serious lack in music education for years now around the world and orchestras are now paying the price – something is lost. It is about educating audiences and bringing them along with us.

“It is our job to provide people with the knowledge,” Fisch continues, adding bluntly that an orchestra that does not evolve does not deserve to survive.

“With WASO we have the Discovery program, where I talk to audiences and encourage people to use their ­mobile phones. To incorporate them. I also put YouTube videos out there. I think you have to constantly reinvent the dynamic between the music, the orchestra and the audience.”

Fisch’s investment in the future of classical music in Australia sees him undertake a week-long residency at the Australian National Academy in Melbourne this month. The residency will culminate in the annual ANAM Music Gala, where he will steer students through Brahms’ Second Symphony. The program will also feature two contemporary compositions in Anna Clyne’s This Midnight Hour and Lachlan Skipworth’s flute concerto, the latter premiered by WASO in 2024 – works Fisch says both build on the epistemological pillars of the form.

“We have had a disconnect for about 100 years between contemporary music and audiences,” Fisch concludes.

Asher Fisch with students from ANAM

“Music got more extreme in the 20th century and now we are witnessing more appreciation for the past. Like with Anna and Lachlan, there is a very positive trend with composers in dialling back on the extremism in their music. These pieces create an access point for audiences. I am not saying it needs to be tonal or pretty. It simply needs to connect.”

Asher Fisch performs with WASO at UWA’s Winthrop Hall on March 15 (Strauss’s Die Fledermaus), before conducting the Australian National Academy of Music Gala on March 21 at the Melbourne Recital Hall.