Adam Fischer was born in Budapest, and is one of the most important conductors working today. In 1987 he founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic, to unite musicians from both his home countries. At the same time, he initiated the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt as an international platform for the performance of Haydn’s music.
Alongside his regular projects with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Danish Chamber Orchestra and the Budapest Wagner Days, highlights of his 2025/26 season have included performances of Così fan tutte at the Vienna State Opera and concerts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London, with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Mozartwoche Festival in Salzburg and with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Igor Levit at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and the Vienna Musikverein.
He acquired his wide-ranging repertory through a career which he began as a répétiteur for the Graz Opera, going on to become general music director of the opera houses of Freiburg, Kassel, Mannheim and Budapest. In 1978 he made his international breakthrough at the Bavarian State Opera. Since then, he has been a regular guest at leading opera houses including the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Milan, the Paris Opéra and the Metropolitan Opera, and at international festivals such as the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals.
In 2006 Adam Fischer embarked on a new path with the founding of the Wagner Days in Budapest. Together with Gábor Zoboki, the architect of Müpa Budapest, he realized his idea of performing Wagner’s works in a concert hall, including the entire hall in an all-round experience.
With the Danish Chamber Orchestra, whose artistic director he has been since 1998, he has developed a unique style. Their recordings of the complete Mozart symphonies and the complete Beethoven symphonies have won several awards. A complete recording of Brahms’s symphonies followed in 2022. They are currently working on a recording of Haydn’s Paris and London symphonies, to be released by Naxos.
As the principal conductor of the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, Adam Fischer initiated a Haydn-Mahler cycle in 2015, which received a BBC Music Magazine Award and an OPUS Klassik in 2019.
Adam Fischer is a member of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and since 2016 annually awards the Human Rights Prize of the Düsseldorf Tonhalle. His awards include the Israeli Wolf Prize, the Gold Medal of the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Danish Order of the Dannebrog and the special Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Classical Music Awards.
