All the officials of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra were wearing formal shoes on Wednesday, but Martin Fischer-Dieskau, their newly elected music director-designate, was in trainers. It was a statement. Fischer-Dieskau is a strong believer in the contemporary relevance of classical music and its importance for the young.
“Young people are not quite aware of how strong classical music’s influence is,” he said. “Someone who lets himself be touched by this music learns to think with the heart.”
Fischer-Dieskau is in Taipei for eight weeks in order, as he put it, to familiarize himself with the place as it is today. He already finds it “vibrant, busy and cosmopolitan.” He will conduct four concerts with the TSO, beginning next Wednesday.
“I feel proud to be here,” the 55-year-old German said. “I’m the winner of a competition for this post after all, not someone who was invited in by a committee. I’ve had to fight for this.”
He wanted the TSO to be a rising and broadly shining star in Taipei, he said, and was amazed at what talent there was within the orchestra.
“When a group of people comes together with a common aim, the results can be astonishing,” he said. “Symphony orchestras are an example of this. And it’s all a communal effort. When you stand up to conduct an orchestra you can’t hide anything. The instrumentalists know all there is to know about you in five minutes.”
Fischer-Dieskau hopes to attract world-famous names to perform with the orchestra. Already the piano duet Duo d’Accord will be appearing next Wednesday, while the Vienna Philharmonic’s Wolfgang Schulz, one of the most eminent flautists of our time, will feature on May 14.
Wednesday at the National Concert Hall: Mendelssohn, Concerto for Two Pianos; Ma Shuei-long, Searching; Brahms, Symphony No. 2
Friday, April, 25, at Zhongshan Hall: Blacher, Paganini Variations; Schneider, Veranderungen; Gliere, Symphony No. 1
Wednesday, May 14, at the National Concert Hall: Schubert, Overture in the Italian Style; Reinecke, Flute Concerto; Doppler, Concerto for Two Flutes; Schubert/Berio, Rendering
Saturday, May 24, at Zhongshan Hall: Elgar, Enigma Variations; Pan, Formosa Landscapes; Mussorgski/Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition
“But I don’t want the focus to be on the soloists, with the orchestra as just a background band. No, I want the TSO to be the star. I’d also like to invite the best conductors to Taiwan to conduct the TSO — better conductors than me!” he said.
And then there was opera. What plans did he have in that direction, I asked.
“Well,” he replied, “2009 is the TSO’s 40th anniversary, and if I’m confirmed in this post I’d like to stage something rather special. It so happens it’s also the 100th anniversary of Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra. Now wouldn’t it be amazing to stage that here! We’d need the National Theatre, of course, plus invited soloists … .” The names of the greatest modern exponents of the main roles were running through his head, he said, and who knows, maybe they could be persuaded to come for less than their usual fees. Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Staatskapelle Dresden brought Elektra to Taiwan some 20 years ago, but only in an incomplete version, Fischer-Dieskau added.
The opera represents the furthest Strauss went in the direction of dissonant modernism. It was described by the classical scholar Gilbert Highet as a drama of “outrageous violence … set to psychopathic music by Strauss.”
Though Fischer-Dieskau has still to be confirmed as the permanent holder of the TSO job, the operatic double-bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna scheduled for September is something separate and will happen anyway, he said.
The performances will coincide with a major symposium on Puccini’s music to be held in Taipei at the same time to mark this year’s 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
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