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Iván Fischer

conductor

About this Artist

IVÁN FISCHER is the founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He is an honorary conductor of Berlin’s Konzerthaus and Konzerthausorchester. In recent years he has also gained a reputation as a composer, with his works being performed in the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Germany, and Austria. He has directed a number of successful opera productions, and, in 2018, founded the Vicenza Opera Festival.

The Berlin Philharmonic have played more than ten times under Fischer’s baton, and he also spends two weeks every year with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He is also a frequent guest of the leading symphony orchestras in the U.S. As Music Director, he has led the Kent Opera and the Opéra National de Lyon, and was Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.

He is considered one of the most successful orchestra directors in the world. The BFO’s frequent worldwide tours and a series of critically acclaimed and fast-selling records have contributed to Iván Fischer’s reputation. Many of his recordings have been awarded prestigious international prizes.

Fischer is a founder of the Hungarian Mahler Society, Patron of the British Kodály Academy, and an honorary citizen of Budapest. He has received the Golden Medal Award from the President of the Republic of Hungary, and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum for his services in promoting international cultural relations. The government of the French Republic proclaimed him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2006, he was honored with the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s most prestigious arts award. In 2011, he received the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award, Hungary’s Prima Primissima Prize, and the Dutch Ovatie Prize. In 2013, he was granted Honorary Membership to the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2015, he was presented with the Abu Dhabi Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2016 he won the Association of Music Critics of Argentina’s award for Best Foreign Conductor.