# Martin Fischer-Dieskau

Martin Fischer-Dieskau (born 1954) is a German conductor.

## Early life

Fischer-Dieskau was born in Berlin to a musical family; his father was the singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, his mother was the cellist Irmgard Poppen. Fischer-Dieskau's older brother, Mathias, is a highly regarded stage designer, and his younger brother Manuel Fischer-Dieskau is a cellist. Fischer-Dieskau claims that his desire to be a conductor dates from 1961, when he and his older brother visited a rehearsal of Don Giovanni at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in which his father was starring.

## Education

Fischer-Dieskau studied conducting, violin and piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and the Accademia Chigiana di Siena. He participated in masterclasses with Franco Ferrara, Charles Mackerras, Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein. From 1976 to 1977 he was a laureate in the German Music League's National Selection of Young Artists, and in 1978, 1988 and 1997 was awarded scholarships by the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship Program at Tanglewood.
Martin Fischer-Dieskau's education was not exclusively focused on practical music-making. He also received a Magister degree in Italian Literature and Musicology from the Freie Universität Berlin. Publications: Wagner&Verdi, Kulturen der Oper Böhlau Verlag, Köln 2014. In 2015 ensued the PhD graduation with a dissertation about "Conducting in the Nineteenth Century - Italy's special path", which achieved international scientific recognition.

## Musical career

His first success was a production of Haydn's IL MONDO DELLA LUNA at Charlottenburg Palace in his hometown of Berlin in 1974. Shortly thereafter, he won several first prizes in the concert selection of the German Music Council as well as at competitions in Siena and Vienna and was invited to Tanglewood, USA, (1978, 1988, 1997) by Seiji Ozawa as a Leonard Bernstein Fellow. As a result, Antal Doráti also became aware of him and appointed Martin Fischer-Dieskau as his assistant conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the 1978/79 season. After positions in Augsburg, Aachen and Hagen, Fischer-Dieskau became principal conductor at Theater Bern in 1991 with responsibilities for the contemporary, Italian and Russian repertory. He was a frequent guest conductor at festivals in Berlin, Helsinki, Drottningholm, Oviedo and Granada, where he performed in collaboration with celebrity singers such as Ricciarelli, Obraztsova, Aliberti, Seiffert. In 1993 he served as the artistic leader of the Youth Festival at Bayreuth. He has held a professorship in conducting at the University of the Arts Bremen since 1994 and produced and hosted his own television series of eleven musical "tours" that were telecast for ARD throughout Germany. In 2001 he was the initiator of an Israeli-Palestinian-German orchestral summit in Tel Aviv, Israel.
With the Canadian KW Symphony Orchestra, whose sphere of influence covers the entire region around Toronto and of which he was chief conductor from 2000 to 2004, he expanded the standard repertoire and opened the concert hall to new audiences. In 2002, the founding of the orchestra's first German-Canadian festival was one of the achievements of the orchestra under his direction.
From 2009 to 2011 he was Music Director of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted the full range of the symphonic repertoire with an emphasis on the latest Taiwanese music, but also staged operas and helped organize an international Puccini symposium.
In view of a flooding of the music market with new and by no means consistently qualified young "conductors" of both sexes almost weekly, Fischer-Dieskau seems increasingly sensible to point out the representatives of the great conducting traditions of the 20th century when planning his concert programmes. In 2022, Antal Doráti's only opera THE CHOSEN/DER KÜNDER was world premiered at Orpheo/Naxos with an international cast of star singers. The recording of this only play from the pen of the philosopher Martin Buber in opera form met with an enthusiastic press response worldwide and was accompanied in 2023 by scientific symposia by various organizers in Europe under the direction of Martin Fischer-Dieskau.
In 2024, Fischer-Dieskau initiated a collaboration with the Wilhelm Furtwängler Society of China, which began with a concert by the Harbin Symphony Orchestra on November 29, the date of the eve of the 70th anniversary of Furtwängler's death. Thirty years earlier, Fischer-Dieskau had already provided a Furtwängler tribute with the Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, which was broadcast worldwide and released on CD.
Fischer-Dieskau has travelled extensively across Europe, North America and Asia for professional engagements, including with the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, Moscow State Orchestra the Orchestre National de France, the NHK Tokyo, the Tokyo Philharmonic and the New Japan Philharmonic. He conducted all of the major orchestras in Germany, Scandinavia and many Italian, Spanish and Israeli orchestras in a total of more than 100 worldwide.
In opera - on top of holding positions with the Augsburg, Hagen, Aachen and Bern theaters -. Martin Fischer-Dieskau worked for the Württemberg State Opera Stuttgart, directed productions at Italian, Spanish and US opera houses, such as the San Carlo in Naples, the Regio in Turin, the Oviedo, Palma de Mallorca and the Liceu opera theatres in Barcelona, as well as at the Minnesota and Hawaii Opera.

## Recordings

* Concert for Lidice (BIS-CD-578), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, New Berlin Chamber Orchestra
* Humperdinck: Moorish Rhapsody/Sleeping Beauty (Naxos 8.223369), Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
* Furtwängler: Te Deum, Hindemith: Mathis der Maler Symphony, Berlin Rundfunk-Symphonieorchester, IPPNW concerts.
* Antal Doráti: DER KÜNDER world premiere recording, Konieczny, Schade, Frenkel, Beethoven Academy Orchestra Cracow, ORFEO/NAXOS