“I consider eclecticism to be the most modern musical language of our time,” writes conductor Iván Fischer, who has recently been returning to his first love: composition. Anyone familiar with his sometimes eccentric, brilliantly precise work on the podium won’t be surprised to find similar qualities in his compositions. The wry little Fanfare that opens this portrait CD sets the tone for the music that follows: quirky, lean and with a gleefully scattergun approach to its influences. In Tsuchigumo, a 20-minute satirical children’s opera, Monteverdi-like recitatives jostle with Weill-style choruses and a thudding bass guitar; Shudh Sarang-Sextet incorporates an Indian raga, teaming a string quintet with a tabla; Eine Deutsch-Jiddische Kantate begins with a prelude that could almost be by JS Bach. Fischer’s daughter Nora is a focused, fluid soprano soloist in the latter and in some tiny Spinoza settings, and is haunting in the Yiddish mourning song A Nay Kleyd.
