Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Saka. My guest today is one of the

world's best-known and best-loved conductors who professes to dislike 90% of what it means to be a

maestro international conductor. Ivan Fisher was born in Budapest some seven decades ago. His family was Jewish,

and though his parents survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary, his grandparents were not so lucky.

His childhood was filled with music, and by 25 he'd won one of the top international prizes

for young conductors.

Since then, orchestral music has dominated his life,

though he's always brought to it an unconventional, playful spirit.

He's performed in all of the great centres of classical music,

but his creative heart remains in Budapest, in the Budapest Festival Orchestra,

which he founded four decades ago and which he continues to lead. Not for him the stuffiness and

ritual that sometimes characterizes classical music. He encourages his musicians to think of

the orchestra as a lab, open to musical experimentation,

in terms of genre, presentation, and audience interaction.

He's taken his ensemble to schools, to prisons, and onto the streets.

He writes music too and says he wishes he'd started composing much earlier.

His opera, the Red Heifer, addressed anti-Semitism in 19th century Hungary.

And there is today a tension between his artistic and personal liberalism

and the illiberal authoritarianism of Hungary's populist government, led by Victor Orban.

Aside from politics, there's also been the challenge to all cultural life posed by the

COVID pandemic. So in this current climate, how easy is it to find the magic in music making?

Well, Ivan Fisher joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk.

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