Karajan artists: Edwin Fischer – a generous pianist

The Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer was one of the most distinguished Bach, Mozart and Beethoven interpreters of his generation. Born in 1886, he was 22 years older than Karajan. Their first joint concert was during one of Karajan’s “golden seasons” in Aachen, when – not yet 30 years old – he managed to invite artists like Cortot, Kulenkampff, Mainardi, Erb and Hotter to perform with him. With Fischer he played Mozart’s D minor piano concerto in April 1937 in Aachen and four years later twice in Berlin to mark the 150^th anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791. When cultural (and public) life in Berlin collapsed in the last months of World War II, Karajan and his wife fled to Italy and stayed there under precarious conditions. In his last years, Karajan told Richard Osborne:

“We stayed hidden in a boat-house that was attached to a house of people we knew. We had nothing at all to live on; but one day I received a sum of money that we managed to divide up so that it lasted for many weeks, just so much a day. Edwin Fischer had sent it. It is a kindness I shall never forget.”

Fischer supported him incognito. This is even more remarkable, as by then he and Karajan had only met for three concerts. After the war, they appeared at the Lucerne Festival with the Lucerne Orchestra performing Beethoven’s 3^rd piano concerto in 1949. In 1951, they visited Paris with the Vienna Symphony playing Mozart’s piano concerto K 482. Their last joint concert with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 1954 had the same Mozart concerto on the programme. The two performances with Fischer were the only occasions on which Karajan conducted this piece. Edwin Fischer died in 1960.

—  P.R. Jenkins